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002one off [Music] no you're right um together all right welcome everybody um to our school board meeting this evening um I need to call this to order and I need a motion to go into the standard school board meeting some have so moved second the emotion all in favor say aye aye any opposed I have it I passes if we can all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you all right the first thing is we need to have a motion to approve tonight's agenda Mr chairman I move we approve tonight's agenda as presented second I have a motion and a second all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed eyes passes um the next thing we need to do is we need to have a motion to approve the consent agenda items a
003b and c as identified on the agenda so let's make that approval Joel approves it I second that Dave Bennett seconds that all in favor hi any opposed eyes have it send agenda passes all right next thing on here is we have our presentations we'll move right down the road today so uh what we have first on our presentations Ryan you want to take this sure um Sharon Peterson members of the board I think we're going to hear from the Transportation first so Travis come on down Travis tackle director of Transportation foreign Transportation director try to make this as short and sweet as possible so we can move on and not get too bored with all the data that comes with this uh right off the bat we'll go over some accomplishments from last year
004daily average was 1259 students we get that information from a snapshot from the state that we take every year so it's state data it's pretty accurate that's a mixture of Elementary and secondary routes Am Pm middle day shuttles and so we transport quite a bit of students throughout the day during the summer we did 49 320 Mills I was really astounded by that number I had to call and verify that that was correct and she assured me that was the right number you know that's a lot of working time that goes into that and we really appreciate food service and everything that everybody does for that um we've replaced two buses your board approved purchasing last year they are here they're getting ready to be put into service so you should see some shiny new
005ones going down street along with that we purchased a new facilities work van that was approved replaced an old aging van that just needed constant work and it was in pretty bad shape here comes some of the data I was talking about I don't want to get too far in the weeds bore everybody but uh activity miles you know we get this data from complete miles of activities divided by average daily membership and you can see on the side there it's field trip miles it's a little bit less we do a lot more activities through the whsaa this so bus referrals we were on a good Trend where we were going down it seems recently we've been trending back up but as a cautionary note on that um most of these referrals are minor what
006we consider in their first stage usually when a student gets a first stage referral from the bus that's as far as it ever usually goes and we correct that action the drivers work with them we work with schools we appreciate everything the schools do with us to make sure Transportation on the bus is safe and dependable and enjoyable for all so we're hoping it'll start trending back down average age of the bus fleet um you know with working with the board and getting approval for new buses every year this helps keep that age down buses are more reliable they're safer so we appreciate you know getting to work with the board and getting new buses every year when we can well this kind of goes with the previous slide newer buses take a lot less
007maintenance the newer Technologies they're coming out with are a lot more dependable used to be you know older engines were Dependable but they had things he kind of had to chase all the time these newer ones are pretty bulletproof for the most part um most of the bus manufacturers knew what they're doing and they improved every year and it seems like they're just getting better and better [Music] this is another slide that's you know it doesn't look very good but as a cautionary thing it's all of our data includes everything so this is minor accidents major accidents it doesn't matter if it's a fence post or a rock you know we include that into this data so we have a complete you know figure so how many major do you have you have here would
008you say and what would be a major I mean I got an idea about associated with it I would consider a major where someone is physically harmful you know I'm relatively new to the district I've only been in about seven months eight months and what I've been told is that there's only been two what we'd consider major instances within like the last 10 to 13 years so we're talking about these are Fender vendors who scrape the car yeah these are or car scraped us right yeah and that that just including this data too is where we're not at fault this is still compiled into our data so we have accurate records so even though it might look bad it's really not as bad as it looks but I guess the only thing was looking at
009the trend you know obviously we had the cocoa juice in there but 21 22 it's climbing a little bit so and that kind of goes along with you know Evanston is growing we are getting more people there's more traffic and it gets a little more um uh what would I say it it's a little harder to negotiate some streets with a big bus and a lot more traffic we do constantly train the drivers we look at routes constantly if we need to make adjustments if we need to do anything to keep everybody safe that's the major goal keep everybody safe safe reliable transportation so the same thing with the trend up I'm hoping we can get the train to go back down because every time there is any kind of accident we review it we
010talk to the driver we have a committee that we talk it over we train on it to hopefully prevent these in the future this is uh just to let you know where we are with staff travel Vehicles these are what we'd call non-reimbursed vehicles so this would just be like um you know what the superintendent needs to go to Casper or we gotta send somebody somebody else that's just to let you know where they are on mileage and how much they're costing to run you as you can see some of them are kind of getting up there in age some of them are getting up there in mileage that is something that I think that we would need to look at in the future is maybe replace some of these vehicles the current strategy is
011when the reimbursed multi-passenger Vehicles come of age we can cycle those down into staff vehicles and replace those with something new My worry is that some of these are aging out faster than the multi-purpose the reimburse vehicles are going to be you know being able to be passed down how many of those do we have there are students only Suburbans is there five I think there's five or six yes one two three four and then the Yukon five those these are always additional Suburbans that are students okay all right and that's not including the staff travel Vehicles when they become of age they become available so yeah okay but these are agents yeah the state sets uh a minimum age of 15 years or 200 000 miles for the the reading burst student vehicles to
012be passed down once they hit that age they kind of leave it up to us that we can either you know sell them scrap them use them for staff vehicles but they have to hit that age limit before they'll let us do that um a lot of them are maybe 10 years old so we still have another five years to go and a whole lot of miles and that's where I don't think some of these vehicles are going to make it that far and so if you look at look at the trend here you can see that 10 years ago we had tried to keep up on our vehicles 10 years ago our budgets dropped our cut a lot of areas cut Staffing the 208 the 2018 Honda was a lease vehicle that we took
013over from Jared and the Subaru was really the last new purchase that has been made in that Fleet and you can see that at some point when there is money available we need to look at well I was just looking at the you know 83 cents per mile on that Suburban that's getting pretty expensive to maintain yeah it's that and then you know it's the the worry about sending someone to Whirlwind and having them on the side of the road stop somewhere you know that's and we're working with other districts to see what their procedure is what they are doing to replace these vehicles if they have like a year in mileage recommendation or just kind of seeing what they're doing yeah because we're 18 years old about them Suburbans Yukon so and some of
014them look it yeah oh I wrote in one trust me we need a new one yeah they're they're getting there you know and that's just it's when we have funding available and we actually have a good no procedure set in place to do that that's when we'll look at this a little bit more in time potential savings along with buying buses every year we can submit for dare grants which I've already done this year and I'm waiting to see if we get approved or not um the grant applies up to 25 of the total cost of the bus is what they'll pay for so what really offsets the cost anyway so if our Environmental Quality would that assumed that we were going to go to a natural gas bus or electric bus or what no
015it's 25 just replacing the old diesel technology with new cleaner diesel technology okay yeah that's the same they have standards on what years of buses they'll allow you to put in for like you can't put like a 2017 in and just say hey we want to get rid of this they'll say no it's got to be I think it's a 2004 to a 2009 year it's just a better cleaner yeah emissions yeah Mission standards they would love everybody to go natural gas or propane but it it'd be hard especially where we're at um in the shop we're updating some repair procedures and maintenance industry standards like I was saying with newer buses come newer maintenance schedules so we're just updating that you can go further on your oil changes now you don't have to change
016coolant as often you can all kinds of things the way you repair buses we're slowly upgrading everything getting it to the new maintenance schedules we've gotten new software some new training for the mechanics to help with that and I see that saving us quite a bit of money in the future if they can do more repairs in the shop instead of sending them out that saves us a lot of money outside vendor repairs cost a small fortune so some of the issues we're looking at in the future we've already talked about staff Vehicles another big hit his uh hydraulic lifts in the shop there are in-ground lifts they lift the bus they're big they're aged they're put in when the building was built normally they have a 20-year lifespan so we're well beyond that 20-year
017lifespan so we had this conversation a little bit when George was here are we set on lifts is there an opportunity to utilize a pit instead of a lift and not go with a couple lifts and go with a pit to handle some of the work that needs to be done toss at some of the costs or you think you would need I will I would strongly removes the pit is nice for doing light things like changing oil or more often than not having the bus in the air is where we need to be because every time that bus is in a bay we do inspection procedures to make sure that it's safe and that's really hard to do in a pit um I guess lifts reimbursable so there is some gray area with the
018lifts on being reversible uh the State Transportation director and I have had some conversations where they draw the line is uh remodeling so the lifts are reimbursable but there is some concrete work some civil work that needs to go in there so that's the gray areas do they consider that remodeling or not so if you replace the underground with above ground lifts is that or would you replace the mechanics would prefer to do the below ground and they do that yeah so I guess I was going to bring this up if you have the opportunity go out to the Wyoming Department of Transportation and they have those portable lifts that they put on their snowplows that are pretty pretty handy without having to be fixed in one area that they can move around a little
019bit and maybe that's the option of of a set that's like that and then maybe what one that's fixed underground because obviously the cost associated with that is going to be extensive having to take the other one out and put another one in but if you can find something that is portable like that out there maybe we can have a little cost savings with with that kind of a lift that we could have out there so I don't know if you've gone and looked at them or if you've seen that before yeah so but yeah um I've seen those before I've actually worked with them personally with mobile column lifts uh they do have advantages they are faster they're easy to work with the disadvantages are if you need to take a wind off to
020do brake work or wheel seals then it there's another set it says here that they no longer meet standards can you expound on that a little bit so it's just like everything else new safety standards get released all the time there is an automotive safety group four just Automotive lifts they update their standards all the time these are so old they don't meet any of the new standards we've actually had a company come out and look at some of them and they say they don't think they'll even certify them again this year so are we putting the district at some sort of liability by having these lifts in in we're getting on the verge of that if I'm going to call them and see if they'll come out and look at them again this year
021and will they certified and certify them you can't use them that's kind of where we're at and that puts us in a bind kind of getting in a pickle here yeah yeah thank you I understand it's a lot of information to get thrown out but it sounds like George has kind of approached you with this before a little bit and yeah I just don't know how it's to break it to you softly I mean that's Mr Chairman's members of the board that's the issue with budgeting for the last 12 last 10 years we've cut apartment budget centers to the Bone and you just can't keep doing that I mean you need to put money into the infrastructure we're 85 percent of our budget goes to staff and that's where the money needs to go but
022need to have the discussion at some point money needs to go back into these departments for their infrastructure so what about Esser funds in the way it can be utilized or anything like this at all everything is covered oh okay all right no I ultimately we're going to do everything we can to get these to be reimbursed by the state I've been working with Jaren a little bit about major maintenance and we're thinking maybe if we can show that we're going to work together that made your maintenance May pay a little bit and the state will reimburse a little bit or we're kind of seeing where so I'm going to throw this out there give us a ballpark what we're talking about you got two lifts out there right now three you have three lifts
023what are we looking at the last estimate I was given was about 300 000 piece a piece so that's just because all the work that goes in they got to cut the concrete out they got to pull the lifts out they got to do a bunch of civil work and that's what I was saying if there was another alternative to it and not going back underground where the the Civil cost was going to be associated with it and we went another route where we had maybe one lift that was fixed and maybe a couple portable and do all your brake work and everything and your tires and your brakes and your lines on one and then the other ones to do other surfaces from underneath it that that's what I'm saying instead of going a
024million because there's some way that we can go and get it for 750 000 save us 250 000 by going with those other lifts that might work for some of it so yeah with that you know I've I have talked to him about if we decide to go that route what we could do um it still is pretty costly because the lifts that are in ground we can leave them there but they have to remove all the oil out of them and then they have to bury them and then the way the floor is sloped with the concrete current need for those lifts you have to have a pretty flat floor for those mobile columns so we're still going to be quite a bit of money today go down that road it will be less
025but at what point are we no longer certified with those lows to have a date no I need to get the lift people out too come and look it expires this year though yeah that's that's the date I was looking for if we can find Alternatives and get together so just really quickly I know we're kind of going back and forth our goal recognizing that this is a safety issue um my biggest fear is to have a mechanic or even a bus driver underneath there and and we have something catastrophic so my goal is I've already kind of carved away I told trap was about 750 000 out of my major maintenance in an effort to expedite getting this taken care of this summer if Transportation comes back and says hey don't refund fully 100
026that's a win-win for us I mean that that's great but um at this point um I would like to have at least two of those lifts completely replaced by the time school starts um in August just because of the safety Factor so on the funding end of it where would you pull the money from or do we look at a short-term loan until we figure out what to do with it Mr chairman that's what we have carried over here okay and the reimbursement would be great if they're going through reimbursement we'd have to pay up front then it would be earnings sends out of our carryover cash flow if it's major maintenance pulled them out took the oil out smoothed it out probably transportation's probably about 200 a piece okay so replace them in ground
027okay can I ask would would we be silly to do two give and move and d-move and all these other things for the contractors to come and do that our best bet is too um no I mean dual are we silly not to do three so try this one yeah we were just discussing this a little bit um if we can get them to reimburse the lifts even if we have to cover civil work we would be down to just around 200 for the lift and then we would just cough cover the Civil work that's why we start a budget process tonight that's why transportation is always first it helps us it helps you guys when we get to that point where we can explain why we budgeted the way we did so these are
028definitely in our view and you'll get a chance as we move on to budget process students see how we're budgeting and why we budget I guess timing is yet a consideration is if we are going to affirm with this that needs to happen sooner than later so we can get that design to put in place because it's got to be in place before we try to get things ready we're talking July August getting buses ready at that point so we need to have these things done mid-summer so and that transportation is always presents first okay I usually ask for two buses we need to keep that approved typically in March so we can purchase two buses to get control members and we just keep that Fleet as soon as possible and traffic's going to test
029I've been after him we've been back and forth since October yeah ongoing thing for a month or two now to get firm quotes from companies so that we can kind of get the bidding process and be ready to go and you know although it's now February our goal is to have his expedited and the issue delay on Parks and materials yeah so sooner than later that we need to get going so but it definitely is a concern and that's why you know we definitely want to have this rectified whether that comes out a major maintenance whether that's a reimbursed or whatever right now and my budgeting I know I can take care of two of them I'd love to take care of all three but we'll see where we're at how soon can we know
030if there's reimbursement available I I can't say for sure um the last time I talked to the State Transportation director about that he basically just said you know send him a letter with some solid figures and then they have what they call the PTAC committee which decides what is reimbursed or not like when it's the gray area kind of stuff and they would decide and let us know so I guess this is my point coming forward is we just need to get it done then we go back after the reimbursables so our carryover funds if we have that available if we have a major maintenance money we need to get this done and then then we can work on the process of getting reimbursed because we cannot not have them right so when do we
031have to start chipping concrete if we're going to meet your deadline foreign on the manufacturer that's I've gotta we've asked two of them to come out I've dangled the golden carrot and they haven't showed up sorry possession you because you're standing by the mine guys [Music] um a company that I have worked with in the past yeah I've been in contact with them and they are not um I guess would say certified to do work in Wyoming or licensed I I don't know what that's all about they're supposed to be that's what they tell me certain vendors can work in certain States and and what that means is their area might just include Utah Nevada they're not allowed to come here our rent might be out of Denver Colorado even though they're 90 miles away
032I've got to wait for the guy that's 520 miles away to make it worth his while to come here even though I'm saying look I've got a million dollars come here I need you [Music] thank you so much and as more information comes available we will be sharing that with you of course this was just to kind of give you a you know as a heads up update that this is something we'll be looking at soon um and I guess that's my thing is because next month's March and then the next month's April and then next thing we know it's June and July so that's what I'm saying I don't know if we need to give approval for you to head that direction or not that as soon as we get that's one of the
033reasons why we do this is so you guys can see we're moving forward okay and so you're not surprised when it comes back with a bid for 750 000 for three weeks okay let you know why we're doing it and ahead of time so again okay starting to get ahead of the game as much as possible all right back on task okay I can I definitely can try to have some more information for you next board meeting okay so you had to continue on uh another issue we're dealing with is uh recruiting and retention of staff seems to be everywhere these days it doesn't matter who you work for or what department you're in trying to figure out that magic mixture of how to keep staff here and I can't give you an answer on
034that either seems to be they can hop from one job to another just to increase pay along the way and that's that's hard um one thing is is the eldt standards that we train with which are Federal Regulation it takes time to go through that training and a lot of them say they'll be in for that six week commitment but they they won't make it that far and as soon as they have a license that's another thing so we give them a CDL they get that CDL and they go somewhere else so I guess that's another thing I would bring up but I'm taking over because any industry that you work in you spend a lot of money on training and it's a huge investment is there an offset somewhere where we could pay more
035to retain them than to keep retraining and certifying and being a training ground for other companies because they do end up with their CDL and then they move on so how do we address the training issue and the expenses that we have going out that direction is there a better way Peterson members of the board we're right in the middle of the study of our support staff to look at the market and what is competitive and we know that our trainers bus drivers mechanics their salaries are not competitive right now thank goodness we're a pretty good place to work but even though we made significant increases in salaries a year ago it needs to happen again that's going to be the expectation and what we have as an advantage is the separation of Transportation because
036it's 100 reimbursable so we can raise the salaries May cost us some first year but they'll be reimbursed the second so we have some opportunities there the challenge is and I'll say competitive nature jealousy of one staff member to the other and we just have to get past that you're going to have to pay the price to get the people I think is what it's going to take someone with the CDL potentially may get a higher rates than someone that doesn't have a CBO it's just the nature of what we're facing we cannot have school without transportation we're currently doing everything we can think of to get people to apply and once they're applied and we hire them we're doing everything we can to keep them here and it just seems to be slowing down
037that we're losing staff but uh we're just gonna keep working on it until we figure it out committed um to continue on uh back to the buses you know this year if when I find out if the state will allow us to purchase buses or if we get Dairy grants I will I you know come to the board for approval if we get approved by the state that's kind of their deal is buses have to go 17 years or 240 000 miles before they'll actually allow us to submit for bus replacements so I've put in for these approvals and I'm just waiting to hear what they're gonna do and then that replacement of the staff travel Vehicles is on the bottom but we already talked about that so and that's all I have for you
038any questions or more than that okay thank you thank you appreciate it thanks I just want to know why Travis up here he's been a really good addition to our transportation department we appreciate them maybe that's one way we keep people let them know how much we appreciate it thank you thank you very much foreign [Music] keep doing this good evening chairman Peterson members of the board I'm Linda Martin I'm the food service director tonight I'm going to do some comparison and just so you know I'm comparing back to the 1920 school year because that was the last time we had free and reduced information so looking at when we had free meals for all doesn't make much sense to compare to today since everything's pretty different so the first thing I was looking at
039was our pre and reduced numbers from 2019 to today we are up by two percent a couple couple surprising things to note Horizons up to by 15 Uno Meadows is down by 11 percent I don't know whether there's a change in the demographics of that area that has caused the the percentage to go down we certainly have pushed and pushed and pushed to get those Freight and reduced apps I feel like we've got them I don't feel like we're missing out on a lot but interesting to see the difference between those middle schools are down a little bit but the high school is almost even so hard to say why but those are the numbers that we've got from from back then to now um looking at what we've been serving we are up by
040about 19 meals compared to 1920 for breakfast to this date or January 31st we've served 33 806 breakfasts and 136 799 lunches and we're up by about 132 lunches which I'm very happy with um now if I look at the numbers from last year uh breakfast we had served at this point fifty seven thousand six hundred and sixty two so that's down about twenty four thousand and lunch we had served 178 almost 179 so we're down by about 42 000. big difference when people have to pay for meals our summer program this year we served a [Music] 000 student or meals half of those were done on the bus as Travis mentioned I just know that this next year that will not be the case we cannot serve out in the community kids are going
041to have to come to a school and physically stay in a school to eat they will not be able to pick up a meal and take it they have to stay in and eat the entire meal on site so our numbers are going to drop dramatically um I think this slide is probably something that everybody's aware of food costs are incredibly On The Rise I compared last year's pricing to this year's we're up about 20 percent overall with the exception of eggs that are up by 325 percent um it's uh when you think about eggs you think well we probably don't use a lot we get a lot of the the pattied eggs but because we bake all of our own breads all of our recipes have eggs in them so we're going through a
042ton of eggs so that that cost has been really tough sometimes I was gonna say Star Valley I mean the uh Ranch yeah Red Devil Ranch we need chickens like chicken chicken there we go the number of people in this town that are talking about getting chickens right now is pretty crazy um the other thing that we're seeing is a lot of outages uh we're still having a lot of supply chain issues um it's it's interesting I put in orders twice a week and I put the order in and then about five minutes later I get a confirmation that shows me what all I'm not going to be able to receive then I have to go back in and try to find other things that I can replace it with which means it's off of
043our bid so now I'm paying a much higher cost for the same item so that's been a little bit difficult or a lot of bit difficult some weeks um we're hearing interesting reasons we can't get brown rice because of factory burnt down and they can't get the right type of rice to produce the parboiled the Tomato crops are are really low right now so we're having a hard time getting marinara and tomato sauce and ketchup um and they're telling us it's going to be late April early May and peaches are down by 16 so it's really hard to get canned peaches so you just never know from week to week what we might run into and what we can and can't get so it gets we get to be creative my staff is really really
044creative and I love it because they're willing to try different things we've been baking a lot of new items and and creating some new things that um are really cutting our costs because if we can make it from scratch it's a lot cheaper than having to buy [Music] foreign [Music] we had a an excess fund balance and so I've spent that money on replacing a lot of of our key pieces of equipment namely ovens um at the end of this year we will in fact within the next couple weeks we will have every single oven in the district replaced with the exception of three in the bakery um so we've got all brand new ovens um so that that's making a big difference some schools only had single ovens and I've switched them to double
045Stacks so that they're able to produce more within their school which is helping with our labor and we also got a grant for four additional Ovens that those are the ones that will be here within the next week or so for those of you who like uh the cheese wedge or remember the cheese wedge because it's really popular so in order to produce cheese wedge we would have to take big pieces of dough and literally roll to get those done it took us we were always pushing it to get the cheese wedges out to the schools in time so I purchased a roller and the ladies are just going nuts because we can roll out the dough in they did cheese wedge today and they were done by 9 30. we've never been done that
046early so that was that was a fun purchase that they're excited about is it still as good oh yeah it doesn't make it [Applause] can you classify that as homemade no yeah well it was homemade before but but going through a machine to roll out that dough makes a big difference and we started making our own calzones and things we're using the roller for a lot more than just cheese wedge so um this is another slide I'm throwing in a slave chair for our state so every year I go to DC and I just thought it might be interesting for you to know what we're presenting to DC um in March so the the number one thing on the list was to make the reimbursement rate um that they put in the increase that they
047put in have that last it's supposed to end in June they're giving us an extra 40 cents a meal um that's supposed to go away in June so we're asking them to maintain that and keep it um keep it going given that our expenses are so much higher so is 40 cents enough that you're asking for or should you go back and ask for more we're worth 20 percent um 40 cents isn't enough but the third one down to uh is it on here maybe I didn't even put it on here but um the other thing is to oh yeah expand benefits to offer free meals to all I mean that's what we'd really like to see happen um our legislators from Wyoming are not going to support that um and I understand the cost
048that's involved but I did look up what the cost was to feed all the prisoners and the amount of money that we spend on prisoners is way more than what it would cost to feed all of our kids and personally I think our kids need it more so that's my argument um that we're also asking USDA to keep the current [Music] um requirements for our meals the sodium level right now I think is low I struggle to meet it and they're about ready to cut it again and it's a interim cut so it's a cut next year and then the following year it's going to get cut further um I think our kids could attest to the fact that they don't want to eat cardboard for lunch so I I really struggle with this and
049and we they've been pushing it we're hoping that they'll push it again right now we have to do 80 whole grain uh it was a hundred percent then they reduced it to 80 it's supposed to go back to 100 percent it's it's difficult to get the products it's difficult to find products that the kids will eat and enjoy so trying to get us back into at least 80 would be great and then we're asking for them to reduce the regulatory burdens right now we have peer reviews once every five years it's supposed to go to every three years which means our state has to come out and review our program the process I went through it last year the process is about a month long of intense getting paperwork and everything sent and uploaded to
050the state and then having them come out and then another week of fixing anything that they decide needs to be taken care of so it's it's a lot of work for both them and for us so we're asking them to keep it at the five-year and not reduce it to the three year foreign [Music] all right thank you very much I guess we're moving on to the next area and this is going to be a fun one standard based gradients I'd like to do a quick overview of where we are with the HRS then go to our fourth grade and then do the standard base report okay so you're going to cover the HRS stuff on discussion items that our board members who went through that oh well I just want to talk Joel I
051mean you've been quiet all day it's like you're in advance not here [Music] I can assign yeah [Music] Peterson trustees um this is just a quick update of where we are with HRS I think there is a little confusion and I wanted to kind of make sure up we're all on the same page the high reliability schools model provides a framework to stay focused on the right work for loan Insurance we've selected the HRS as a platform for school Improvement I don't know how many years School Improvement has been required continuous Improvement has been part of our model State requirement I don't know 30 plus years we used to use North Central accreditation the new state accreditation we developed our own accreditation and seven years ago we made the move to HRS it is simply
052a framework for school Improvement um the right work highly motivated students teachers and administrators do not have a problem with working hard problems rise when schools are not consistently focused on the right work over time and I'd say in our district I've been here for 35 years we have always worked very hard these we've always had a plan of improvement and we've always worked those plans and we're proven but we've been in and out of different programs we've tried different things we even developed our own Improvement plan that was very high level and required a great deal of work on our staff and principles the question is is HRS the right work and is it focusing focusing Us in the right direction and that's the question that I believe the board has been asked for
053the last seven years and we presented the last seven years this year specifically we've invited teachers to express their I guess feelings about the plcs and the work that they're doing DLCs our board probably seven years ago made a commitment that we are a collaborative school district and we expect collaboration with our teachers I think this is critical um higher liability schools is a commitment sorry my picture's right there Christie's getting my there how's that it is a way a district or School chooses to live it's what we've decided to focus on to help us improve it's a structure it's based not on what I think works but based on years and years and years of educational research these multi-studies that have been done by Hattie and what works in schools the 50 top so
054yeah the 50 top strategies that work for schools have not I think are pretty clearly accepted and higher reliability schools focuses on those effect sizes and what really works in schools higher lab building means being accountable for ensuring that what we're doing is working that is the key to HRS it's not us as a district you as a board determining if what we're doing is working it's an outside organization that comes in and looks at the evidence High reliability schools is set up on leading indicators and the leading indicators are truly the goals that are out there for our staff and how they reach those goals collaborative teams do that the lagging indicators is the evidence and you guys are aware we're just recognized all of our eight schools were recognized certified level two which
055means they were just certified in level one and level two last spring you have to do both you just can't do level one and then pass it and go to level two our goals that have been set by Discord in this District focus on those [Music] really [Music] uh these are the five levels the board that went to the HRS conference saw these inverted they put level five on top another one at the bottom because level one two and three are foundational so they come first I kind of like they start at the top and we weren't down to one of the others um if you look at these levels and just read the title save support and collaborative culture effective teaching in every classroom guaranteed and viable curriculum it's hard to debate that toes
056aren't the work that we should be doing the right work especially when you look at the leading indicators levels one two and three are foundational for all schools they represent the hierarchy of priority worked on simultaneously because they are interdependent lower levels are prioritized for improvement first we start with level one made sense but why we were working on level one we are already working on level two and we were dabbling in level three now that we've been certified in level one two and three we're dabbling in level four that's why we have a presentation tonight about standard-based reporting and standard-based grades level four and level five are optional so who determines if we move to level four level five it's the board you will be the ones to determine if we move forward but
057the natural it's a natural consequences of the work of level one two and three to move to level four and five I'll be honest I'm not convinced level five is for us or level five can be done at the secondary um or even day five it's a stretch I believe and I haven't been exposed enough to school districts that are doing level five but uh level four in our district is already moving on we have a standard based report card K5 and we're looking at six eight um I think if we try to take the standard base report card out of K5 we would have a value because they love it and it if you've seen it it is very impressive it can tell a parent where the student knot is what they know and
058are able to do and what they don't know and they're not able to do anything to be worked on very good system to achieve our goals you must apply two things discipline a consistency is those of you that have been in our community for a long time consistency has been something that has always been a concern you change things every year you do things every year differently I can tell you in the last seven years we have not moved off of the HRS system as our level of school Improvement that's our framework that's what we've used the flexibility that I appreciate to our teachers and our buildings and The Guiding coalitions to do HRS is truly the power and strength we sat there and listened to horizontal who put this together with others and he
059simply said you don't have to use our products you don't have to include us at all follow the framework and you will see Improvement whatever you want to use use it I thought that was pretty powerful typically that's not what you get when you go to a conference that's supported by the individual you Developers and finally these are our board goals this is really important I wanted to get to [Music] um we've sat down every year for the last seven years and the board has supported these they end up being District roles as the schools have worked on them too the pathway to Excellence which is our Improvement plan long-range goal setting whatever you want to call it is based on the highway Louisville schools framework fundamentals of the plcs again we are a collaborative
060District um standards and assessment work K-12 and the goal to provide a guaranteed and viable curriculum those are our goals that's why we do what we do we still have other goals to improve communication which we'll always probably work on a commitment by our buildings and agreed upon by the board is that we would like to be certified one two and three by May of 2024. that gives us a year to work on level three and one two and three and that's where we are notice there is not even a goal up there that mentions level four we're not there yet we have certain schools that I believe are elementaries if I'm right their plan is to certify level one two and three this spring and they believe they can do it that's their commitment
061from their teams um be pretty impressive I hope they pull it off secondary schools they'll need till 2024 and hopefully they'll be disciplined and consistent in that as they move forward and then the life skills that we've talked about in the past which are important part of Education K-12 and those are our goals that's why HRS is something that you'll continue to hear from us we think it's important that you as a board are educated on where we are and where we're going is there a great deal of work to do yes is there some controversial work that lays ahead of us potentially I think if we're all educated in what standard-based reporting is maybe not as much as I kind of heard recently what I'm concerned about is the Bold the board passport current
062board has been very committed that collaboration is a must we do not hire independent contractors as school teachers anymore they work as team members grade level and content level and that's the expectation of our principles that if they have someone that does not want to collaborate we need to help them I guess see the light and improve that is the commitment from this board that is my commitment to the administrators and I believe that's the commitment to administrators to our teachers [Music] thank you not now you got me I'll add water and my notes are upside down I don't know where to go from here so are we going fourth grade PLC is that where we're at right now I guess if you don't mind I can still go ahead oh yeah hold just one
063second I was able to go with a few of the board members and a few principals uh super 10 Orion the superintendents to go to San Antonio for a couple days to get the framework of the marsano high reliability schools um I wanted to understand the why um that's a big thing why are we doing this what's the purpose um I'm I'm a con I'm in the construction business and every week we go off of key performance indicators kpis that is our culture as a group and if we don't measure we don't improve um so I was impressed with with the framework because that they call it to me it's like our key indicators that's our kpis how can we measure each other's growth if you don't have something to measure too and uh we
064do a very similar to what your what the schools do uh uh Elementary to middle school right now and it's I was impressed when they bring up Jim Collins in the conferences that all this is based off of good to great that's something we use in business world and honestly when we look at our school organization I think is this the biggest organization in the in this city in the county so yeah to have a framework to measure to is important to see if we're improving and so are the questions that I have absolutely did I learn everything I needed to do there's a lot I still need to learn but having the idea of improvement and the base set upon something I learned a lot and I was impressed with this program so that's
065what I got thanks alrighty you want to Meadows fourth grade PLC I'm gonna set him down in front Okay I gotta stand do that that would be fine [Music] so but what I will ask is if you're going to sit down and address this please let us know your names chairman Peterson members of the board I will do that right now does that work that's fine okay so this is our fourth grade team I'm super excited to introduce them to you um I've got Katie Gomez here Bailey Heidi Heidi Dulce Alvarez Nicole Linford and Karen Piper we've got a pretty good and you've got a pretty good overview of the PLC teams and kind of the work that they've done I want to get a little bit more specific today and talk a little bit
066and this team's been super Innovative on how they've approached the work that they're doing especially when they give an assessment after they give an assessment you get all this data it's like well what do we do with the data because there's a lot and there's a lot of kids and how do we you know put our students in the best positions possible with the data that we have and they have a taka form that they're going to talk about and just kind of how they process the data so I'll turn the time over to them thanks guys okay I'll do the first talking point um Ryan if you could go to slide four sorry I don't have a clicker my clicker in my hand or anything too far no no no no you're good you're
067good yeah after yep right there that's perfect okay so I'm gonna talk to you guys about the 15 day challenge so as collaborative teams we discuss for student learning the four critical questions and the first critical question is what do students need to learn and be able to do and so our 15 day challenges and our common formative assessments help us answer this question a 15-day challenge is a progression of learning that is created by the grade level teams and we target a specific standard for the unit we start by creating the common formative assessments or you hear CF CFA which is based on the standard being taught within the unit and creating this first helps us see what students need to master at the end of the unit we start by taking the standard
068and we break it down into individual skills which allows students to be able to go through a progression of skills and then it leads to students to being able to reach the overall learning Target or standard of that unit so the 15-day challenge before we even teach it it's analyzed and edited by the teachers beforehand going over the 15-day challenge allows us as teachers to talk about that individual skill and see how we would teach it in our own individual classrooms when we have these important discussions we come up with very different strategies that we feel could help the students be successful in completing the goal the goal this ensures that we are providing a guaranteed and viable curriculum as you can see the 15 Day Challenge is broken up into the day it's broken
069up into the learning Target or the skill needed to be taught for that day and then we have our resources that we use to teach the lesson um we collect all sorts of our strategies assignments and our skills from our cqi program and our Eureka math program at times if needs be we will find additional resources to help us improve the rigor of the lessons or the strategies that we want the students to learn then we link all of the resources that we're going to use into the 50-day challenges which allows all the teachers to have access to the content to teach all right did you go down I think it might be six okay I'm gonna talk to you about two different things this first slide you'll see is our standards progression we as
070a team made this a couple of years ago you'll see that uh there's the units that are found in our ckla um program that we use but we also have standards assigned to each of the units that it best fits in the proficiency level that it's taught at in that unit and then the quarter that it's taught in as well [Music] um when we create the CFA we refer back to this document to see which proficiency level we should be looking at to teach leading up to the assessment that we'll be giving it also allows us to look ahead to upcoming units to know when we need to up the rigor to a proficiency level three um and we'll know that we have to meet our goal by that time finally this helps us ensure
071that we are common in all of our grading on our report cards if we've all agreed to teach to a level two then we can ensure that our report cards really are Equitable to each other go ahead to the next one for me we could use it this is update this one [Music] you check it anymore okay this is an example of a CFA that we have scored so the of course the student CFA is the printed part that you see behind it and then we go through and we score it beforehand we do the scoring of this and we actually create the CFA prior to ever making the 15-day challenge um it's called backwards planning and it basically just tells us by the end of this unit or by the end of this time
072period this is what the students have to be able to do and then the 15-day challenges that progression of learning to get it get us to this point um so the CFA has created much sooner than we ever teach it we create these score sheets prior to giving the assessment to ensure that we are Equitable and aligned in our grading we always do this before assessing so that we aren't skewing our grading based on the results that we're getting in like well I know this student should be a three so maybe this is what a proficient student looks like instead we've done it before so that we really can have a conversation with each other to talk about what does proficiency look like it doesn't matter that the student usually comes in proficient we are
073the ones who decide what proficiency should look like some things that we've done is bring out previous years assessments just to kind of get an idea of what misconceptions students have typically on these assessments or what went wrong in our instruction in the future we'd really like to be better at looking at those misconceptions earlier than making this score sheet so that we can be a little more proactive instead of reactive and try to catch those misconceptions before they see before we see them on the test um we create score sheets like this for every Ela CFA that we do as well as every math CFA that we do up next you're going to hear Karen and Nicole talk about how our team answers critical question number two how will we know if students have
074learned foreign [Music] I think this is the really exciting part because after we all grade our cfas we need a way to compile the data so that way we can look at it we're not just shuffling through a whole bunch of tests we had ways we could do it but we didn't love them and after a training with Kim Bailey she presented an idea of how we could do this in a Google form yeah so after each of us grades are our classes cfas we go through and we input the data on a Google form for each one of our students and this allows us to see collectively how the fourth grade did but it also allows us to see kid by Kid how they did on the questions and the standards and then on
075the next slide you can see after all this data is inputted we get these really handy pie charts where we can look and see exactly how the fourth grade did on each standard and how they did on each question and I'm going to be talking excuse me um about the Talk itself um Mr Thomas started my speech a little bit earlier um we we have done a lot of research in our school with John Hattie and the effect sizes and the very top effect size is the collective efficacy it's the largest impact on student achievement so that's just the belief that all of us more positively impact the learning of the students if we work together as a team which we do that really well which leads us into the talk the talk it stands
076for teams team analysis of common assessments and it was presented us to us by a solution tree consultant her name is Janelle Keating and she just took us through the process of going through a talk after you teach the three-week unit and just documenting The Learning Journey that took place over that past three weeks so during that Learning Journey some of the things we would notice is or we'd have conversations about might be who taught this standard really well which students did really well were there more students proficient it also determines which targets or standards were higher or lower than others but it's also a chance for us to highlight one of us as teachers because if they did something well they're going to share their strategies with the team so that we can all
077replicate that same success yeah so on the next one I'm going yeah one more uh as I was saying earlier the Google forms are really cool with these charts because they show us we go question by question so we can see how the students did on each question and as I said we can really see the misconceptions that the kids have and the next steps that we're going to take and on the next slide you can see I think this is where the real power comes in is in the discussions that we have on each question like I thought I knew how to find the main idea until I started having these discussions with my team and then I was like oh that's how you actually find the main idea so that's how I'm actually
078going to present that to my class so this discussion that we have with our team is where the real power comes in and then we can take it back to our win groups to reteach these things to the kids who aren't quite getting it yet and that leads into mine on the next screen is our conversation about tier one and tier two instruction you can see that again this is at the end of our unit so you can see the different things that we've noticed um specifically you can see the highlighted where it says next year or either on an upcoming unit when we teach that same skill and we want to make sure that we try to catch some of those holes before they happen it also helps us prepare for those future units
079that we're going to teach when we gradually release some of the responsibility onto the students you'll see that this is also a time that we talk about um as Nicole said our tier one instruction but also what are we going to do in tier two to close these these gaps so this is the the next question under the four critical questions what are we going to do if they don't Master the standard so this is the time again we have a great conversation about what would be a good topic to teach during win group but we not only talk about tier two we do talk about how the critical question number four what are we going to do to extend and enrich those students in that same win group so understand that that when group
080isn't just for tier two it's also for those kids who have mastered the standard and need to be extended and enriched but the most important thing that I think that we do during this time is I mentioned earlier that we share our successes but it's a great time to to share teacher moves instructional strategies and even learning conditions that we use do what kind of small groupings did we do how do we arrange the students but these are the questions do we ask ourselves all the time which is you know what was the overall percentage of kids meeting the standard what do we notice class by class if a team member had great success what did they do um so the last thing I was just going to mention on here again what do we
081do to extend those kids are often put in authentic tax tasks those are also called pbls or problem-based learning or project-based learning so they're always extended but we do spend probably 60 to 80 percent of our students are in some sort of reteach for about a three to five week cycle depending on the content area so anything other than don't say don't say he's gonna wrap this up she's the turn the corner it's gonna be quick because they did a great job okay move on to the next perfect so at the end of our 15 day challenges this is a great time for us to reflection on what went well um and as Karen said we can talk about what we did independently to make our students succeed or we can always know what we
082need to fix or do better on for the next year so these 15 day challenges really guide our future instructions for the following year extensions and celebrations um we've we do something really cool where we allow our students to kind of celebrate the end of each unit by allowing them to do activities that are centered around the unit itself so for example we had a middle age unit where we allowed them to make their own swords and then build their own catapults just kind of let them make the connections to the unit itself and therefore enrich their learning and that's all we have [Music] questions I got a question okay so how do they one of the things we talked about last week or last month of science was that the teachers have to let
083these kids know how to reach their level four what happened looking back at all these sites there's no level four how do they research for sure sure okay so um as teachers we come up with these things called proficiency skills and so um it's not something that we hide from the students we actually create a proficiency skill for a teacher that has our teacher jargon in it but then we go and create proficiency skills for the students that have a little bit more student jargon related and So within the proficiency skills it kind of lists the types of skills a level one a level two a level three and a level four are so for example a level one would be a student who might have lots of teacher assistants when trying to reach you
084know the standard where a level four is kind of that enriching where we kind of take it to the next level for them where it might be used as more of an analysis or they're trying to relate it to real world situations so we display these proficiency skills in our classrooms for the teacher for the students to to see and see where they can have those opportunities to reach a score for track and the students do track yes and they have yep they self-track themselves so with that Google sheet does it is there a space to put a level four um we just hadn't taught to a level four on that one because that was our first intro to main idea and key detail but in like unit five that's where we were really pushing
085them further make sure maybe that's what Chris's question was Chris did you get that last part oh yeah no yeah as they stated there are level four I mean every student knows what that is um many teachers have student data trackers where they have a little notebook in their desk tells them exactly what a Stu and student-friendly language what a level four is so that expectation of a four we don't expect all kids to be at a four we expect kids to try and stretch to a four we expect all kids to be at a level three but they all know very well what a level four is are there any other questions yes sir Mr Bennett well since I'm the oldest here and I've been in the district a long time I think when
086we have an opportunity to tell people how we connect with the lives of our students I need to share that with you and Bailey down there she was a Crompton at the time but she was my officer at the high school for the last two years and she came into my office one day totally terrified about being that I'll never forget it because she you know I was kind of a terrifying person at the time and uh in that period of time by the time I retired and she went on to college we talked about her future and she's an example of that connection as an educator because we talked about her being a teacher and that's where she is today and I'm very proud of this I want to take that opportunity to tell
087her because we never know who we're connecting with as teachers the lives you're connecting with and above all the education we talk about it's a relationship with kids that moves them on and to the next level so thanks baby well thank you and one more thing just to wrap it up what what this team talked about today is often the most intimidating part of this collaborative process it's easy to say we're going to work together but when you need to bring your results from what happened in your class and present it to those who you're working with sometimes those results aren't as good as those people you're sitting next to but they've created this culture in their team where they're all working together it's not me against you it is these are all of our
088kids we're going to figure out what works best for each and every one of them and make a plan for each and every one of them to get better and that's what's impressive with what they've done so are there any other questions thank you all right so now we're sliding back up to beat on presentations we are wherever you want to be how about standard base grading how about that that we will cover that topic right now all right so Mr chair I just want to make sure that might be the first one Mr chair ladies and gentlemen the board um so it's my honor to just kind of kick off the standards reference uh grading standards reference learning portion for the 612 group so a couple of things that that you heard Ryan talked
089about at these ladies talked about that idea of consistency right and that's what I like about the Doug Reeves quote that's on there you know the same people that that get frustrated at a basketball game and I've I've seen each pretty much every one of you at a basketball game and every one of us has yelled an official even Me Maybe right because we didn't think things were Fair right and those same people right are still okay with inconsistencies in our school around curriculum and Grading right and that's what we're trying to work our way away from right so that that we have that equality and opportunity right for all of our kids no matter what teacher they get we can guarantee you can sit in that chair and guarantee and say you know what
090it doesn't matter what teacher your student gets they're going to teach in different ways that's the art that's the beauty that's what everybody brings to the table but in terms of the curriculum they're going to learn the same things they do it in a different way right but that's what we're working towards right that's the whole idea behind this all right so um we uh as secondary uh folks we want we want you to hear from the teachers because it's it's their perspective that that matters and quite honestly that's where this has come from right Ryan showed you level four is not on our our board goals right but those teachers that are doing the work around curriculum right that have a standards-based curriculum they have standards-based instruction and they're coming to our principles and
091saying hey our grading system doesn't align with with what we're doing here right so how can we get our grading system to align more closely with the work that we're doing in our classroom every day how do we communicate more clearly to our students and our parents exactly what that grade means and and that's what's going to come through with the presentation today so uh Mr Chris Knott is going to go through a quick timeline for you and then I'll introduce our teachers foreign Peterson member of the board so I'm grateful to be here we haven't heard much about how this came about tonight so I'm grateful that we have a little bit of time to say hey this is where it all started um we heard about standards-based grading standards reference grading back in
0922017 and we heard about it because we had heard that a a great town in Wyoming Sheridan was working with the standards reference grading but when we heard about that it did Intrigue us and we were able to gather around 20 people that actually went to that conference it was in August 2017. so we went and listened to Mr Thomas Manning Thomas Manny talked about PLC light versus PLC right and basically what he spoke to us about was the importance of using priority standards to actually determine who or I'm sorry to actually determine what was important for our students to know from grade level to grade level and so with the priority standards we it was a two-day workshop we worked with him extensively and he told us how to do a PLC right and
093he started out with saying okay here's what you need to do every state has standards for education we need you in your content area to look at those state standards and take them apart okay and what he used the term unwrap them and so that in and of itself was a challenge for all of us that were there we had teachers and administrators and what we had to do was okay we know what the standards are we might not have them memorized but now what we have to do is break them down so what this timeline shows you and I'm not going to go through the entire timeline it just tells you where this started and then where it ended up basically where it's ended up for us is the fact that this fourth quarter
094in the mid at the middle school levels we're going to be scoring our students braiding them as you may call it based on both employment or work habits and academics and we're going to be using a level one through four scale score as the elementary is already explained to you so there's a lot more involved in it but we'll talk about the things involved it starts with priority standards breaking them down turning them into learning targets that we expect our students to know and be able to do and then other things such as the PLC and the high reliability schools PLC as you've already heard professional learning communities and the high reliability School format for certification they all come together to help us teach our kids these standards referenced skills Okay so we've gone a
095long ways from the beginning as you see 2017 we're now in 2023 it's not a quick process but it is a process that's worthwhile and as we studied this I I became excited about it again and I think this is a good time to listen to what it's all about and to feel that excitement and know why we're going in this direction thank you all right so it's my privilege to introduce um Crystal Peterson and Devin Park as they are our eighth grade uh Math teachers come on down [Music] um so I'm happy to be here tonight I wanted to share like our Evolution through the last nine years of working together um and my personal philosophy change on grades so I taught and I've been teaching 17 years and when I first saw started
096back in the early 2000s grades meant I don't know it meant I was smart right parent would come in be like what does my student need to do or what did my kid need to do to get an A I'm like well I need to do this assignment do it standards were never mentioned skills were rarely mentioned it was just do this so what did getting an a mean didn't really mean anything I had no clue what the student knew what they didn't know I just knew they didn't do this assignment or they did poorly on this test so nine years ago when I moved here and started working at Davis Middle School and doing eighth grade math and working with Crystal and we started doing a lot of the priority standards and proficiency skills
097and HRS work and everything I started realizing I'd been doing it wrong for the first 10 years of my career and pretty much every teacher had been doing it wrong forever because we didn't know what skills would they were wait I didn't know what the grade meant so as we started working on priority standards nine years ago I believe and then we've unwrapped them we did all that then we started working on proficiency skills finally I actually knew what was going on I knew what the students needed to know and I actually knew what they were missing um and really what pushed me to want to have more standards referenced grading was a few years ago when I had a student I can't remember us standing in the hallway and saying you need to be
098here working on this skill and their exact comment to me was nah now I'm eligible I don't care it doesn't matter and I said to him when you want to get a job and you have to do five skills at this job and you're good at three of them your boss isn't going to be happy because he needs you to do all five and I know that you are good at this one this one this one but these three or four you're not good at you don't know how to do them we need to bring you in he said no I have the grade I want I'm good and it was at that point that I realized I'm not going to be able to get through to a lot of these students until [Music] I
099get rid of the grade and I say hey this skill we're low on we need to work on this skill this standard we're low on and that brings it to light a lot more my conversations with parents at parent-teacher conferences now are so much better than before before it was do this assignment now it's we're getting this skill this skilled this skill and I was always jealous of the elementary teachers when I'd go and to their parent-teacher conferences with my kids I knew exactly where my my child was and I was like why can't we do it like that and we can but we couldn't until we went through all this work and that's actually the next step that we're at I can now have a better conversation with students I can have a better
100conversation with parents and it's not about I'm happy with my grade it's oh I'm low in this area I need to go work on this area because when I graduate and I get a job if I can't do everything else to me I need to improve and if I don't improve I'm going to be looking for something else so I feel that's the next step we're ready for we're kind of our progression in the HRS work is stopped until we can actually break that one and then we can move forward with it thank you all right I'm going to talk a little bit more about what I think are the pros and cons of this um like Devin I've been doing it a long time I would always kind of get to the idea of
101okay what do kids need to know but wasn't really sure how to keep track of that and what to do with it next went through it was probably I've seen it on the way here about 2013. my own daughter was in eighth grade and I had kids in my algebra class that I knew they didn't know the content very well but because I was grading at a 50 50 by that I meant um 50 was based on their grades their test grades and then 50 was based on did you do your practice and so I knew that their their grade didn't really Fleck their knowledge base and so kind of played around with that with percentages a bit uh Devin and I tried a little bit with 75.25 and really kind of found that that
102the good number was an 80 20. eighty percent based on your content understanding and twenty percent based on your classroom participation or we'll call them academic behaviors so that leads me into what I think are some pros of looking at standards reference to reporting um I think it's really beneficial that you can identify the standard the content the skill and Deb and I have it broken down really specifically that we can go to our assessment and identify you missed question 1B that means you don't know how to find a y-intercept on a graph in a level two I mean we can break it down very very specifically with each student and I like that we can identify it by content and what they're understanding is so I think that's a pro I think another Pro
103with this is that looking to standards reference reporting we're able to take out those academic behaviors I know all the teachers here and those that left we're probably all guilty of giving let me give you a grade you get 100 if you bring your Kleenex you get 100 if you bring your parent syllabus sheet and those are all academic behaviors but by moving to standards reference grading we can set separate that out and now just focus on what the student knows now that leads to kind of a con that I have with this and we're trying to figure out how to make this work better by looking away from those behaviors I'm noticing I've got students who are choosing not to do my work it doesn't matter all that matters is the test I don't
104have to do my practice and so by not having something that ties back to that practice because like Devin said I gotta be I'm good but a b is not meeting proficiency on what's expected in our eighth grade requirements but I'm okay with a B but you're not gonna be ready for next year so that is a con for me in that we need to look at some way and I think we've called it employability or work habits how we can tie that in to make the kids buy into that because right now for me that aspect of moving away from the regular grading how I can put a percentage to the behaviors I need some way to give incentive to the kids that they want to go back to doing their work doing their
105practice and I don't know if we tied in with activity eligibility or how we do that but that's something that our guiding coalitions have been working on and definitely middle school is going to look different than high school because we don't have you know the valedictorian salutatorian all of those kinds of things scholarships College entrances etc etc but I do like the idea of being able to separate it out by what a child knows and then how are we going to address those children that are just not Meeting those academic behaviors like we want them to have because you have some want to be able to go and do all these Mass Fields but more importantly I want them to be able to go out into the workforce and be able to know how to
106work and know how to be a good employee you know we talked about start conferences and how that has changed one of the first things I do is I pull out and say okay let's look at your content but now can you tell me what your employability rating is 4321 what are you and the parents will look down with the child and say well it says two so I can say well I automatically know that means you're not doing all your practice you're not doing all your expected work you're not being a good employee if I'm your boss I'm worried that you're not going to be performing for my company and I'm worried about the efficiency that you're providing for me as an employer so it's kind of changed the direction of the conversation when
107we're able to separate out the behaviors from the academic understanding so that's what I have on my notes okay yes any questions okay thank you thank you thank you all right so um that is a perfect example that team if you know those two individuals you know they are night and day different right no yes right but but in terms of being able to come together and work together and collaborate they teach completely differently right their Styles once they walk into the classroom are completely different but I can absolutely guarantee you that it doesn't matter which which room you're in right you're going to get the same curriculum you're going to get the same standards the same focus and that's what we're working towards so um all right so next up will be our high
108school math group that includes a little mix of Verizon and EHS come on so you got I said a mix I have to bring handouts yeah everyone here um so yeah um they're all different by the way they're what they're all different yes so just a variety some of the snow some of us don't know who you are so thank you so my name is Belinda Hancock and I'm a math department head at the high school and what I've handed out they're all different just so there's a variety of different curriculums there you have algebra geometry Algebra 2 there's a fast track so you can see what the work has entailed at the high school it's it's been a lot of work but this is to guarantee our our curriculum is the same in all
109of our courses so we all come together and we use the same proficiency scale this is also colored because we give them to the students and they're required to keep them in their notebooks and it's organized in a way that they can see their progress through the you know through that unit so so you can see that the priority standards are at the top as you guys probably know there's like it seems like there's a million math standards so um you know we prioritize which ones we want to focus on of course we have our supporting standards that fall in there that mesh in but we actually in our gradebooks we actually report based on the standards as of right now so the students earn an advanced proficient basic or below basic on their cfas
110and that's what they see it's not based on a percentage it's based on those levels and they know that they are expected to be out proficient so those cfas you see at the beginning are like checkpoints to so we can see if our students are progressing at the way they need to progress or if we need to intervene and do some remediation um so the students like I said the students get targeted feedback so they know where they're at at all times and you can also see on the different proficiency skills that we break it down into steps so the students can follow those steps so I think I don't know they kind of left but 20 years ago I I used to do the same thing if you bring toilet paper I'll give you
111extra credit toilet paper Kleenex maybe stage all in favor but um you know I mean we would do little things like that you know they'd get their homework and I'm sorry but I never know I never knew who actually did their homework who cheated and then with the technology these days I mean they can just get take a picture of it of a problem and it shows all the steps this way you know if it's if it's standards based and we are progressing as we go homework isn't it's a behavior that we can't monitor so much so we have that extra practice and we build that practice into class time so we can monitor their learning so that's what I say good no you guys have any questions for using your questions than giving you
112a whole Spiel yeah concerns because we presented before and you know what we're doing so we're just wondering what your questions are we I know that Scott gave us a few so we're anticipating some really you want to ask them no anybody anybody going once going twice I have one oh okay all right Mr chair so I guess going back down the line and Uncle Fred and uh Mr Chris not hit this uh last month on the behavior issues on a standards based is there two lines that you guys go down how do you uh make sure that the individual is performing outside of school doing work you know some people come in we have people that can come in I know kids that could come in and just go through a test and absolutely
113do nothing and then still be proficient within what they're doing but but do no effort and anything outside of it yes we um go ahead we do have our professional skills that we did it's 15 of our grade and it's and that's all through the high school so and what but that is mainly not that is mainly kept track of in class because we don't have control over what happens outside of of class people you know students have sports they have home lives that may not support you know doing homework so what we focus on is our professional skills being done primarily in the classroom and that's what we give that on so listening listening skills doing daily activities in class you know they if they're just sitting there and we have a whole hour
114to review and they're just sitting there you know we have that conversation and that's where that comes in so did that answer your question maybe and Mr Peterson what what if they get it like what if they naturally get it that's okay no I'm gonna go down this road okay so you ready for this I had a business I worked right I had an individual that was smart beyond smart picked up things fast but I went to his house every day to pick him up to go to work every day he was an hour late I had to pick him up to go to work his habits were horrible right absolutely horrible so where are we at by teaching kids that you can come in and you're going to be okay because you understand this
115but I'm losing money an hour a day because you're too lazy to get out of bed and your work habits are horrible had an individual in Jackson five-man crew we're all up ready to go individual is not there go knock on his door he's still in bed I said okay I'm gonna go get gas I'm going to come back we're going to get ready and we're going to go come back knock on the door he is still in bed I go down now I'm an hour and a half at a crew that I'm paying that has horrible work habits he come out the front door I threw him the keys and I says you're done go home so I I understand yes but there's a whole hour mind a whole different line that we go
116now that is workability or or work ethics that are we teaching that are we allowing them just to go in and do a test so now we see the light as far as why you as a board really wanted us to bring these Facebook skills in and we'll worry for you and we don't disagree with you like that's why we brought this so a little bit of history on this too that I think so Lander has been one of the leaders in moving to standard difference grading and being from Riverton I knew a lot of their teachers and one of the downfalls that they did is they didn't count we call it a professional skills grade because that's what it's called in the industry so we used to call it employability but we we've changed
117it to professional skills but what happened in Lander was the teachers didn't feel like there was any recourse to actually work with kids on these behaviors so at the high school we've actually it's it's counted as 15 percent of the grade and so um we do grade them on it we actually do very specific work on that teachers put comments in it and so that's been a very positive thing but to me I think it's really important to have that recourse to be able to deal with that right and so that's anyway I'm pretty adamant about it I J and just learning from Lander and kind of that mistake that they made and so that's why at the high school we've made that decision um as to actually it is 15 of their grade we
118we asked a lot of advice y-15 and and really the number around the nation is between 10 and 20 percent is typically what it's graded and counted as and so we chose 15 as a guiding Coalition well I'm sorry that's a question I have the criteria of grading is your test on a Chromebook and they click A B C D or is it a worksheet where they have to show their work and how they got the right answer right now I use a program called Mastery connect oh technology it's like is this one working it is okay so right now we use a program called masterconnect so it is multiple choice however they're very good test maker so it's common for the test makers it's kind of like the people that make the AC to
119your sap and I'm not saying that you know you should face your value on a test trade that's for sure but it does make it so we can put data together a lot easier and also makes it so we have a lot faster feedback so that we can go ahead and get kids the help they need and it and to address your concern with your computer it is actually a cell as a teacher to say hey if you do this work it's going to pay when you go ahead and take this test because they aren't easy right and so most of the time there is a pretty big corporate correlation between the work that we give that's going to help them do well in that standard and the way that we see that is on
120Mastery connect for the math team anyway right and that also brings you guys understand so you can see where they missed what if I can add this and hopefully it's not outliner inappropriate but you're talking about something that has been a challenge for educators since times began in terms of a teacher trying to teach and have a student that is non-motivatable doesn't show up is always tardy really has little to do with performance-based education and the grading at all it's a challenge that we've always faced and even more challenging than that is you cannot reduce an academic grade attendance that's why we haven't attended standard standard at the high school you may still get the grade but we can not award credit because you didn't ship the market big difference the skills you're talking about
121have been built into quality Educators performance forever and it really separates the most talented teachers who can motivate their kids get him to class on time hold them accountable if they're not and it's the overall structure of the school what are we doing as a school program to emphasize these professional skills and you are 100 right we cannot get away from you if anything one of our goals that you saw was those life skills they are vital that we focus on affecting performance in an academic grade a little scary to me but are they expectations we need to communicate I know if my kids got a poor citizenship grade talking about the same thing different name I was more concerned about that than that A B C or D and if we can identify those
122professional skills and communicate those to parents that they're not being met and expectations that if this doesn't continue someone's gonna have to pick up your kid and go to work and sooner or later they're going to be fired that is what we need to be able to communicate what they're not doing in terms of professional skills and that is the power of standard base of performance bases you can communicate those not just drop the grade of 15 it sits on a report card that these are the professional skills that your kids need work on honestly and that's what I guess I'm going down because what he was saying it's 15 on the professional skills should it not be evaluated as a one two three four as our other system and should they not be evaluated
123as that and then so then you divide it out to 85 15 and and do you hold that according to uh eligibility so we can have a kid that just behaves like a complete think in a classroom and still score 85 percent on a test but yet he's eligible so where is the discipline for a kid that has behavior issues okay we're not talking about I mean we'll talk about eligibility in terms of where each school right is in that processing up the purpose for tonight I know purpose not is not for tonight but what I'm sorry we are talking about proficiency those are questions that we'll have to be answered right yeah absolutely all right you guys are good okay awesome thank you guys thank you thank you very much Eric Russell all right
124Aaron's got an excellent perspective as a Singleton right because we talked a lot about collaboration a lot about how these teams come together and do this work Aaron has the most guaranteed curriculum that is going to be talked about tonight yes okay as a Singleton she is always right and it's always guaranteed yes and that's my favorite part of my job no I um so I'm Erin Russell and I teach theater at the high school and I um I am maybe the most single of all Singletons in the whole school because I'm the only one in the whole District I'm the only one that teaches theater at any level so um you know my music friends get a chance to work with their music uh you know the middle school and things like that um
125we as and kind of being a voice from The Guiding Coalition and um a voice for also the some of those departments that are feel like a bit of a square peg in a round hole or vice versa right um this has not necessarily been the easiest um uh transition for us I watched that fourth grade team and I'm like well what would it be like to have a team right like because it's just me and and that's it and there's a lot of people like that you know Ramona is her own team with strings she's it um a lot of our science teachers are the only ones that teach chemistry and that's it you know and so there's there's kind of a there there's a lot of I don't know the complications I suppose
126that come up with that um however there's a lot that is a part of this that is is at its basis just good teaching I mean let's face it knowing what your goal is I was taught that you know 20 years ago when I got my degree it's not like it's not like this is brand new stuff in some ways right but in what so what I think is so wonderful and and so good about this or or can be is that um is that chance to collaborate when you have that opportunity but not everybody does um like Doug said I don't have a lot of arguments in my department um sometimes I argue with myself uh but those are the those are the hard days now sorry they told me not to talk about
127that no I'm just teasing um no it's great it's it's it's there so we do have some concerns um as a parent who you know two of my kids have graduated my middle one is a senior I have two more coming up um I also have concerns from from that perspective as well yeah um as we look at opportunities for scholarships opportunities for um you know continued learning um I'm not gonna end and these guys know me real well but I haven't not shared these concerns with them right so it's not like this is anything that they haven't heard before um these are things that that are concerning because you definitely want your child to um and have those opportunities still so do you know that among the high school teachers if that's the decision
128that we make I think most of us are very much saying if that's what we're doing then we're all going to be on board and we're all going to do this I can't speak for every department but I can speak for mine um that that you know even if we say oh I don't know if that's the best we know that we have to come to consensus or else it's just gonna fall out from under us so there's a few things that like I said that I feel like are very positive with this um it's it's good teaching there's so many great things there as far as knowing what your standards are working through all of that knowing what your year-long goals are are what your unit goal goals are pardon me um that's that's
129good teaching and so knowing that is is is wonderful um letting and communicating art to our children our students where they're at in those that's wonderful that is good teaching to say you are here and for my students especially in my intro classes that's quite simple because I can say David you're not facing the audience we don't want to see your rear end thank you very much turn around right and and it's really easy for us for me to go through with those intro kids and and and find those discreet skills um some of us again you know my Advanced kids I teach some of them for three years in a row and are we still working on discrete skills yes are they always measurable with a rubric or a quiz or not pardon me
130not a rubric they're always measurable with a rubric but are they always measurable with a quiz or something like that no they're not um and in that moment when I say Maya hold on stop I want you to come back here and I want you to redo that scene and I want you to say it this way um that is if I stop and I have to take a moment and write that down that slows down the entire process slows down the whole thing if Mr zigweed has to stop his band and say wait I have to document everything you know and so when I talk about us being a square peg in a round hole those are those are some of the concerns that we have um however I will say that as we've
131gone through this process as we've unpacked the standards as we have um reviewed all these different things and set long-term goals I can tell you that it has definitely helped us improve our practice I'm not I don't think that this is a um I don't think that this is without Merit it's just that not all of us fit into that perfectly does that make sense sometimes I talk and go I don't even know if I just said anything that make is is cogent there um anyway and I know there's a lot of us that are in my situation that feel a little bit isolated um I do also want to say though that when we bring our concerns to Doug or Merle or Scott or whomever they listen and they give us ideas and they
132they try to help us as much as they can we were able to go to a training my department did in Long Beach in November which we kind of felt like we won that Lottery because it was wonderful to be in Long Beach in November but when we went there and and went and got some some good training with solution tree um I felt like we had a lot of breakthroughs for our department and I especially in being alone but still trying to support each other so we hope that we can still use and and make use of those um what's really good about this program even when we're all alone do I still have concerns yes but I shared those so anyway thank you all right thank you all right so Aaron is a
133is a really good example um she she is a Singleton and she could take a break but some of her proficiency skills are some of the best that we have I mean she has put a tremendous amount of work into becoming a absolutely explicitly clear about what she wants her kids to know and be able to do and I think it's it's been a a benefit to all of her kids all right Horizon uh we have a few of our Horizon teachers that are going to talk about the communication that they've had with their parents and and how they're communicating their their grading [Music] so when you were talking about proficiency skills that's why I ran it up here so this is what Horizon uses for our professional skills and we just adopted this from
134what the high school put together in their guided Coalition so the only thing we changed is we only do 10 percent for their professional skills at Horizon it's real hard for a lot of our students to get above that too on this scale so if you want to talk about the rating policy address yourself yeah introduce yourselves okay hello chairman and board members I'm Arnie hengastag I'm a social studies teacher at Horizon [Music] um so a couple themes I've been hearing here are consistency and clarity and I think what we're trying to do with proficiency scales and our grading system is make it really clear what we're grading and what we're looking for and with our approach here sending this out to parents we're trying to make sure I mean I kind of live in
135a world where I've got multiple plc's I've got a PLC with my Horizon team and then I've got a PLC with my content area at the high school as well and so that kind of makes that consistency and agreeing on this makes it easier to communicate to parents um what our expectations are and what they should expect to see so there's no surprises and I think the other you know aspect of this is having this proficiency scale the way I use it in my classroom is I have students self-grade in a sense self-assess and I'll be going through this process on Friday with them I have them look at this I say where do you think you're at you know and then I go around and I have a conference with each of them have
136a conversation with them about it and kind of agree or disagree based on what I've seen um I try to do that multiple times a quarter it makes it really easy when it's time for parent-teacher conferences and the students sitting there with their parents and the parents wondering you know what content knowledge does my student have compared to say their professional skills you know and a lot of you know and that that changes the conversation with the parent as a parent I want to know that is my kid behaving in the classroom you know is that a concern is that something I need to address as a parent and if I can be really super clear on that with this I think that makes for a more positive experience in the teacher conference setting so
137[Music] it's because we agreed on this every four weeks we keep a little checklist in a tally for every class every student how many times were you tardy how many times did you have your cell phone out how many times were you ready and prepared for class did you have your Chromebook did you turn your assignments in on time all that kind of stuff so you can really have that in-depth conversation with them well how come I'm not a four you know and you say well here it is here's the proof and you go back on a daily basis and show them you were tardy 17 times in 18 days you had your folks a phone out on your desk or on your hand 18 times in 18 days so that's why you only have
138a two the big thing that we implemented this year at Horizon and it's helped a lot with the professional skills too is we give them two weeks after the due date to turn in a missing assignment okay so you'll know up here on score four it says that they take ownership of learning by completing retakes making up work from absences immediately or they request a PLT that's the professional learning time kind of like double Pride time demon I don't know what they call it all the schools ours is PLT so we have that extra intervention time to do tier one work with them um to get those done so by giving them those two weeks we just started this at the beginning of this quarter it has made such a difference because now you can
139say that was due on the you know on the 16th of January it's the 7th of February I'm sorry you can't make that up you're stuck with the grades you have and then we also say that at the end of the quarter if they end up with 50 or less on the standards that they didn't meet we'll work with them a little bit especially the seniors to make up those areas and those skills that they've missed out on or lost but if they have a below 50 they didn't even try and no Boston's gonna give you that just like what you were talking about Time and Time and Time and Time Again to be late for party and not get things done so you have any questions for us so this is 10 of their
140grade it's 10 at Horizon I know the high school does 15 but we decided 10. so my other question is I'm not picking on Horizons dude's been there but you guys have a little more challenging students I'm saying it right and some of them some of them are awesome I know but what I'm saying is no matter what the student is what are the consequences if they don't do it I mean they just don't get the grade is that the consequence a lot of kids don't of me in it you know I have it's kind of um so two things are different about Horizon with that is uh we still have summer school and we still do credit recovery Apex Online High School uses that too for seniors you'll see an exception for seniors in
141there because we want them to graduate in four years so it really the concept behind standards based learning references is not letting students off the hook for the learning right we don't you know we're not going to give up on you you've got to learn the material so if you didn't learn it that way with built-in intervention time to Horizon where beyond the PLT time we have a first hour time where if a student doesn't pass a class they go back and they retake it Horizon functions on a quarterly system too so part of the reason we arrived at 10 was that our kids get twice as much feedback on this we they get a grade on this you know four times eight times a year versus you know just semesterly so so that it's
142chunked in smaller chunks so that's kind of how we address those kind of uh issues at the Horizon which which is a little bit unique to Horizon because I use summer school yep summer schools has been on our building the last few years actually yeah yep I can see part of your challenge too what percentage do you think is your your kids fall back into a tier two [Music] but I have a great group of usually 12 10 to 12 that come to my classroom every PLT and that's when we do student council yearbook we plan activities and so that's kind of the enrichment group that are passing everything that has four or three on them and so how do you split up your your teaching of of the kids that are falling behind a
143little bit tier two and and your tier ones you know you obviously you got to catch kids back up so who handles that tier two we pick them every Monday during our PD meeting we sit down and do the PLT group list and then hang them up so that they know every week it changes except Tuesdays that's our SEL time so that group always stays the same and then Wednesday Thursdays we choose we go through and pick who needs intervention and what classroom and so you you will teach your subject matter to the tier two and then what do you do with the tier ones at that point do they you get them at the same time I mean obviously there's time you have to drop back on as concerning your enrichment time yeah so
144there is there are times where there's tier one and two going on in the same classroom but we also have um we do Saturday school we do some after school very limited you know last couple years with after school but our first hour for kids that really need those tier one or tier three supports some tier two supports we have a first hour with the course subjects available Mr Lux does English and Mr agnostic does social studies and be hard to go put a kid to bed but she does math they there's an entire hour for those students that really need intensive longer supports and they're scheduled into that first hour it's not some of them are retaking the course for the quarter some of them are just going back and and redoing units at
145a time versus just maybe an assignment or an assessment so there's there's a lot of different layers of support and Horizon in itself could be viewed from a district perspective as a tier two type intervention just in itself too so that helped me and just wrap things up to you with our grading policy one of our goals this year was to uh really work across content areas as a school to use the same grading policy so this was kind of an experiment on that front all of our teachers just in our building got together and developed this scale the conversion scale and the policy and all of them use the same grading scale it's not you know and they're all part of content area teams which are doing that work at the high school too
146but we really wanted to experiment with the system what would it look like you know if the building used the same system across content areas so they've been doing that this year and we've gained some I think some valuable research through that process that we contribute back to the 612 folks as we move forward with this too so yeah thank you thank you thank you all right Mr Driscoll [Music] my computer [Music] thank you I need to go to the next slide [Music] I'm gonna go over this one pretty quickly so this is our beliefs uh scores reflect students academic achievement scores will not be used for disciplinary purposes at the start of the course students parents will be provided with information regarding scores practices and expectations so those are the syllabuses that the middle
147school and high school that we send home to let people know what we're working on and the last one summative evidence will constitute the majority of a student's score which means final assessments those kind of things will be used at a higher level than some of the other daily work that might be used so I gave you each a packet there's three things on it there I'm not gonna go order from top to bottom but I'm going to go to the second one which is the one um with the demon on it that's what I want to start with this is our Traditional report card now and I want you just to think about this as you look at this student and this is a fictitious Student's name but a real student's scores I want
148you to tell me what do you know about what that can can do and what that kid knows foreign which means what is it maybe an athlete I don't know I'd love that you said I don't know I also want to add there to the bottom this is something new that we started last year when we talk about employability skills and work habits this right here actually defines the things that we're looking at to determine a score on there on this particular report card there is no score if you had the report card of that student there would be a score on there for each one of that students classes to tell you how they did in those three areas be here be respectful and be responsible so I want you to to contrast that
149now to the middle one which you've seen some of these already tonight this is a proficiency scale this is actually an eighth grade science proficiency scale and if you'll look on it on the very top are the standards that they're addressing with this with this scale and then you'll see the scoring guide underneath I particularly like this one because of the boxes it allows the kid to check off as they get good at each one of those things so by looking at this you can now Define what is a score one two three and four now with regards to that where we'd want to move to is this last one and this is a sample so this isn't an entire report card because this only has two two pieces of content has math in English
150so and this particular quarter they were scored in English on those four standards which if you read the standard it gives you an idea what the skill is and knowledge they need to have and then to the right are the scores that they receive for that underneath each content there's also the over the employability skills or work habit which is written out as be here be respectful be responsible and then a score is assigned to that as well foreign [Music] so what you keep your hearing the word Clarity right so that's the one thing with regards to standard reference reporting you can now say okay guess what down here in math you are not very good at division of fractions and we need to spend some more time working on that and actually the best
151thing you're at is writing the equivalent write and evaluate exponents so any questions for me on any of this just based off those criteria those are standards that they're going to prepare our kids take the ACT and address for these are things yeah so when we're talking about these two particular ones English and math these are both two tested subjects on ytop so all of these are aligned with what the white top and the state is demanding of us for for our standards and then there they are working on those so these would all align to your white top math and English now I can address the act because I'm talking from a middle school perspective but okay okay anything else thank you Scott with our fast enough [Music] so when you get up here
152I want to know what those two questions were we're short of time so I'm Gonna Keep moving here chairman Peterson board members always tasked with who's doing the work and just really brief so we've been doing this work as Eric said for a few years but um we're all doing it when you talk about PLC PLC represents the district and in my own learning this year I've really focused on the L learning right and it's kind of been brushed over by me but if we're truly learning Joel mentioned it Mr weedrick mentioned it you know what are the indicators looking at when we're learning how are we really improving what we're doing and so when when we're PLC what we've learned though is every PLC has to to make this work work for our school
153for our town for our district and so there's not just a cookie cutter system right so whatever for example we've talked about professional skills we feel right now that's what we are doing and we may need to adjust but we're making it match our community um but who's doing the work all of us are to be specific each building has a guiding Coalition we at the high school didn't have a guiding Coalition before we really got into the PLC and The Guiding Coalition Works to help with this work and find out that the needs of the cloud of teams we talk weekly we develop PD we talk about questions as some of our teachers have mentioned but each each teacher each team does this work we've done book studies all but one of our teams
154at the high school has now been to a PLC conference and and that's a commitment it takes some time to get everyone there we've also worked with some you know Maria Nelson Dr Haig and we've only worked with Maria twice this year I think we're trying to as we're learning to this work we're kind of getting to a point where we're becoming self-sufficient in this and and just using them a little bit but as you can tell as when I talk about doing this work there's deeply held beliefs by each of us and when you have to come to consensus or change I remember the first time I talked about this when I was teaching about changing a practice I did with just grading tests and you're sometimes reluctant to give that up right and
155so when you talk about belief statements definitions when you talk about collaboration and saying here's what every kid's going to be able to do that is hard work and that's that's why we're doing the work and it's it's a process that's still a processed we got a lot of things to learn but that's um essentially answering that question I hope give any questions for me now [Music] so the high school at the high school level it's always a different Beast because we have those things on the left okay we've got GPA scholarships top 10 percent valedictorian everybody has eligibility but those are things that require a traditional grade and so what most schools do that go into the standard references they have a conversion scale and so this is an example of the conversion skill
156we've run it through our guiding Coalition two times and came up that this is kind of the consensus one but there's it it's consensus it doesn't mean everyone if that makes sense there's still um some questions or concerns about different parts of it and so we're working through to try and come to that consensus to where we're all can get to a point where we can move forward so a conversion scale solves all the other concerns because then they have a letter grade so if you have a letter grade you're going to have a GPA okay and it's interesting because a lot of people are like why are we using a conversion scale a GPA is a conversion skill from a hundred point system to a four-point system if that makes sense we already do
157that we already use conversions in at the high school level scholarships will not even it won't even change anything the valedictorian the top 10 percent all of those things are going to remain the same because they're going to have that conversion score and so it just they're going to have the letter grade the parents will get the feedback by standard but then they'll have a letter grade attached to it as well and those are some of the things high schools have to do because of some of the college stuff some you know just other outside competing pressures and forces that kind of come in so I think that by having a convergence it really solves all of those questions or concerns that I have for any of those it doesn't change our valedictorian policy at
158all not even one bit it's still the same courses it's all based on the same thing it's based on GPA um as far as eligibility we're working pretty hard on this and one thing that I can assure you as a board is we will not put in a system that is more punitive or hard on kids or if you understand what I'm saying I think our eligibility system right now is spot on and I think it's working really well and so you have my word that we're going to find something that isn't going to be you know that throws kids under the bus and so we're looking right now at the high school as I've talked to many many teachers we've talked about it in guiding Coalition we feel that we want to use a
159combination of how they're doing on their professional skills and their academics and so the question that really comes up is I could say Mr Bennett is Joel eligible in your class and you would know that instantly right yes he's eligible academically he's really high and he's performing really well is is um is Mr Peterson Harold no he's been a kind of been naughty right he needs to get some stuff so so I think we're going to find a system that actually has Protections in there too one of the we get the question a lot of times on eligibility why do we do the Monday Thursday thing and I don't know if you guys understand that so what the reason that we do Monday Thursday is it's a protection to students okay because before if you
160came out on the F list on Thursday you were automatically ineligible until the next Thursday regardless of what happened okay and sometimes there were a grade was added too early or whatever and but it just made you ineligible so the reason we have Monday to Thursday if you show up so I'm gonna pick on you again Joel if you don't mind if Joel has an F in math he has till Thursday to get that F in math up if I look at his grades on Thursday and Joel has an F in science he's eligible because he wasn't on the same list on math if that makes sense so now his science is going to start and he's going to have until the next Thursday to get it taken care of and so again eligible on
161Thursday that he wasn't yeah so now if Joel has an F on Monday in math and then F on Thursday in math same course he didn't get it taken care of then he's ineligible from Thursday to the following Thursday so the eligibility policy has a really high incentive to get that taken care of right away so it's a protection to kids we're going to keep that in whatever eligibility we do so we're going to have protections to the kids but we're also going to be able to squeeze on them a little bit as needed and I think we're looking at the high school of including both of those things in and so as we move forward at the high school let me just tell you where I am personally as the principal as the educational
162leader my goal is to try and be ready to move to standards reference grading next year the middle middle schools want to Pilot it and just so you know I've got a pilot group of teachers that are actually on a test server doing grades so they're adding two sets of grades and they're just testing to see how this system works and we're trying to get all of those things figured out I if I don't have all of those things figured out by the end of April because I need May and summer to communicate with parents of what we're doing if I don't have that ready by the end of April I'm going to postpone it and there's as I've just really started to dive in there's a lot of these underlying things that I just
163didn't know number one I didn't know that PowerSchool didn't have all of our standards in so as I started delving into that we had less than a third in there right so now we're working on that so we're trying to get all of these things and processes in to make sure that we're successful my goal is I want every teacher to see what it looks like in the Gradebook know how it reacts know how the conversion scale happens and I I want to make sure that happens personally I don't want to have a train wreck and so that's kind of my timeline is we're working really hard to get there by the end of April and to see if we can have we've got some decisions still to make as far as what are we
164going to do with zeros what are we going to do you know with late work policy and those kind of things coming to uniformity and that's what our guiding Coalition is working on so we have till the end of April to kind of put all that together if we don't have that together and I don't feel comfortable I'm just going to make that call with the support of our guiding coalition to kind of do that now one of the things that I just want to be really clear on this is I would say about 60 percent of our staff could jump and do this today I think another 20 percent could probably get it done in right away and I think we've got some that need just a little bit more time that's why I
165think we're pretty close there and so one of the things too that a lot of teachers that made I haven't even told them this I have several departments that come to me when are we going to do this they some departments have been asking me to do to do this for the last two years but we haven't been quite ready with everybody and so as we move forward that's kind of where we're at um so that's that's kind of where I am as a principal I want to make sure I'm ready to go and I've been talking to some of our staff about that and just saying if we're ready we'll move if not we won't I I don't want to I mean I want to move forward at a a good Pace but I
166don't want to kill us off either if that makes sense I I think you just have to be wise with some of those big structural decisions this this is a big change for teachers when you when you start doing this so anyway that's where I'm at thank you sir we've taken so damn long thank you I have a question yes ma'am I agree we're doing lots and lots of good things the high school is a different beast in my opinion okay I've heard all the good things about standard base grading I would like to hear from someone who doesn't think it's so good from the high school I'd like to hear both sides okay really I think there has to be two sides to this and I don't think there should be any railroading in
167there should be open discussion on this well and we do have open discussion you know what I mean in our guiding coalitions and in our department meetings and those things did I hear correctly you thought 40 of your teachers were not on board no I would say I would say um about 15 percent are questioning pretty hard I would say there's a handful that don't want to do it right I'm not going to lie I mean there's a handful of kids they're always always a handful but I would like to know if there's more than just a handful I I think there's um I don't know I'd have to ask the staff I think there's a percentage that are tentative but I think there's uh a lot of them that are ready I think this
168is a big decision and I think it needs to be looked at on both sides in my opinion yeah in terms of a strategic plan at school improvement improvement what percentage of the staff should be able to derail the progress moving forward so I guess that's my question to you but is I was going to come back to you on this you take them right and the are the pros and the cons and then you come up with an answer you don't just take all the pros and you have to understand that too and kind of what I've seen as a principle is even with standards teaching to standards you've heard that and all of that right back in the day we didn't used to teach the standards and that was a big deal right
169and I remember the big rallying cry was don't tell me what to teach right and um but we when I moved here 17 years ago we had 17 different math programs in this District okay that's what brought this about it that's what Bradley owns what brought all of this about right so we had 17 programs and it was it was a mess so we're trying to get more uniform and all of that but I would say at the high school there are some staff that have struggled with any of this work as we've moved through standards reference grading and the same staff have struggled with looking at standards reference grading does that make sense I think it's I think it's very similar the same population of who they are it's just this grading as certified
170yes I understand it yeah but but I would say that the one a lot of them that I see that are really adamant against you know don't like the standard reference grading also don't like teaching to standards so this brings up my question if we do not have 100 on board and they are refusing to teach engraved towards standards how do we do our reporting to the students and to their parents so so one thing I've known all along the ultimate leverage point of getting staff to teach the standards and standards reference grading and I knew that when we got to this point it's the ultimate Leverage because then they have to enter the grades in that format right it really is and so that's why you'll start to hear more of kind of the
171contrary view of that right and that's you know it's up to everybody's perception to believe what they want right I'm not going to say that but struggle and it's really the same struggle with the classroom teacher and students who don't want to follow the directions that school's face the challenge we have is you heard earlier that when we talk about collaborative teams we talk about guiding coalitions a decision is made and then there's an expectation that we get on board and follow that decision or you get Anarchy it's the same at the district level yet this is years and years and years of commitment to follow the HRS structure as a board you've accepted that commitment and pushed it forward it's influenced everything we've done for the last seven years Improvement and yet we still
172have staff that will not follow or District school goals but yeah we encourage we encourage we support we send them we provide training it's the same as the individual you dealt with at what time do you say I got to get you out of bed every day you're not doing what's expected of a teacher you need to move down the road that's an unbelievable challenge for principals so the other thing that that I want to put a little bit in perspective I've made a lot of phone calls to principals around the state and many of them are in the same exact work we are right now so it's not just us okay Sheridan's actually in the same boat I actually thought Sheridan was doing standards reference grading but they went through four principles in four
173years and they never could get it done you know what that does Mr Bennett so they went through a lot of leadership changes so Landers there Powell's looking at it um well studies Thermopolis is looking at it anyway I've made several different calls just trying to get an idea of what people are doing and what they're working on and and so it it really is kind of the the step if you look at Governor Gordon's work that he wants to get us to this really is putting us in a great position to get to what he is saying and so if you look at you know he would actually like to get to the standards based where you'll kind of lose grade levels and kids can move up as quickly as they can and which
174is level five which would be an interesting presence remember we're working on level three and we've set the goal for level three as as spring 2024. we still have time but I'll ask you this what do we do about the teachers that aren't willing to work on level one or level two so that that so don't get me wrong I I question everything I do my wife really dislikes me because of it but we are all in support of HRS right anybody in here that is not so don't get that wrong we want to make sure that we have all of our ducks in a row and how do we address those ones that are not on board that was my question is we have a handful that handful that is refusing to go down
175the standard base grading and all of a sudden they decide I'm not going to do this everybody's a three everybody's a two you know and that's what I'm going to rate everybody I'll allow them too is what you have is we have a district goal board goal yeah we have building goals that monitor these the responsibility to see that their teachers follow those goals and directives are the principles if the principals can't get those people to do it then it's my responsibility and that's where I think the rubber meets the road the expectation is we're a collaborative team and we still have teams content areas that refuse to look at level three at all um the idea of a guaranteed viable curriculum and you guys have seen the examples of that we don't we don't
176give up on anyone at some point if they fail to improve there needs to be higher consequences that's the responsibility of the principles if that's not done you lay that on my shoulders so you know one of the big things you know the reason I mentioned the rest of the state is you know sometimes it feels like it's just us still it's it's not the rest of the state is working on it places all over the nation are working on it and so you know I think it's the right work um I you know I'm down to the last few years of my career and I'm telling you I've been all over the place and this is the only thing that I've ever seen that's raised student achievement by 20 to 30 percent so that's
177what I'm saying yeah does that make sense no I'm not [Music] it's just a matter of getting over those little hiccups that we need and we know and we know we have them and just you have our support yes just know that I I know I have them right in in the building we're trying to get through those we've got a here's the deal we're going to work to consensus and once we reach consensus we're going to move forward and if there's something where we're not getting to consensus we've got to work until we do and so if I don't feel like we're like I said end of April if I don't feel like we're there then I'm going to pull it and we'll do it at a late you know what I'm saying at
178a later time but I want to make sure we're ready to go because how do you envision consensus how do I Envision consensus can you define that too so what we do is we um so every Department has a member that represents some unguided Coalition so guiding Coalition has a representative we meet we go over things so for example we're working on eligibility we meet and and we come up with the best solution that we feel like we can okay we take it out we get feedback from when we bring it back we adjust we take it back until we feel like we're ready for a vote when we have it and we're ready for a vote we take it to the staff and say okay we're going to vote on this once we've reached
179consensus then as consensus mean 100 no that's really my question what is consensus no you'll never have 100 on internet threshold it's in our document [Music] remember what it is right off the top of my head it's like so there is an ability for you to proceed without a hundred percent absolutely would never be able to do anything well that's kind of my point yeah yeah so I'm good with your answer yeah so there is there is kind of a threshold and I can't remember we have it in our document I haven't done it for a little bit but but that's kind of the process of coming to a consensus and I guess that's my question my point was we have to be diligent in our evaluations and our um assessing of of teachers um
180because if we have the stragglers and would have those issues we got to be able to document yeah and and thank you for answering the question that's been asked three different ways then so yeah yeah so and then the board has to support that because it will come to us and just so you know I've had teachers leave because of the work we're doing you know and it's okay it's okay it's not the end of the world so okay and I just have an observation I'm I'm not trying to be critical I'm in full support of doing the standards-based grading um and you know with everything that we've been doing but I also have the same concern that Mr Peterson has in the professional skills when we all went to school we had deadlines we
181had homework that was due almost every night in most of our classes you were graded on whether you did the work or not and granted it is a lot easier to like the teachers talked about to cheat and I understand that but I I don't think we're waiting the professional skills portion of this enough that's just my observation because I feel that that is carried on into into their adult life I mean I I carried those skills on into college and then into my my work career and I learned them through school and having deadlines and expectations and you know yeah you can make this up two weeks later I sorry I I don't agree with that um so you know we we have staff on on both sides we have staff that would like
182to have it more staff that would don't want to have it included at all um the one thing I think we need to do everything we can as a school to teach that but I still think it's primarily a parent response no and I totally agree with you does that make sense oh no I totally agree with you I don't want to have practices at the school that make things worse yeah so just just one thing on professional skills I've had three parent meetings last couple weeks on kids with behavior and also attendance and those are stressful meetings sometimes right because there's always circumstances but when you have a kid with professional skills at 10 out of 10 and they've been doing everything you've asked and they still don't got it are we going to
183keep supporting them we are and I can differentiate that with a kid like David mentioned is not coming when I've asked now I can justify what I'm doing too it's very targeted I can tell them what they need eligibility wise if the kids even if let's say kids and everything they possibly can and they're a slow learner are we going to make them eligible foreign this kid's doing everything he possibly can but he's just not grasping it yeah he's not 80 percent 85 proficient and then all of a sudden we're making eligible but he's doing everything he boss up again to learn what it is I think the point is Clarity and I don't want us to think that we're getting less than that we're actually doing more with it and it's not all conglomerated
184into one score it's very specific and clear about what we're looking at expecting kids to do and if I could add don't don't assume that because we're letting someone turn an assignment in late but there's not an expectation of their own time the idea is the work that's been done in our first three levels has changed some of our thinking our district is about the learning not about the grading what's important is that we can get a student to master those skills be proficient in those skills that will help them be successful either at the next grade or in the world of work if we just say you don't need to finish that assignment we have lost the idea of it's about the learning I tell you as a teacher my expectation is on time
185or you got a zero this work has changed that philosophy it's about the learning it's not about migrating at the same time I need to be able to emphasize those professional skills and hold the kids accountable for those professors and the idea that if we have someone that's not doing the work if a kid doesn't do assignment J they'll get a lack of professional skills and they'll get a zero on the assignment it's not it's not exclu what am I trying to say it's it's both and so it's actually a more accurate measure what's going on so last year we tried 20 with the small group we did if we change it we'll do it as a building we're trying to find that correct Mark and hopefully be the same as Verizon that's work we've
186got to do still like I said I'm not being critical because you've you've already sold me on it that's a good question but that is a concern um it's just that a lot of these kids are not getting that taught to them at home some are but not all and so um unfortunately that does fall on the schools all the teachers are working really hard and we need deadlines all the handbooks we've looked at have had deadlines and if we told the You Know Math teachers or social studies whatever hey they have until the last hour that's that's not reality so uh get in when we ask you to get in come to our pride time all that stuff hopefully we're getting better at that so great questions thank you very good question yeah honestly
187is the challenge that I see with this is it is new thinking it is a change I think it's definitely a shift in thought and that's the whole point is we're focusing on level one two and three it's influencing other things level four standard based grading it's coming but we have time we have time to work with those who don't want to do it we're not giving up on them we have time but they should and the expectation is their focusing on level one two and three right now guaranteed and viable curriculants which means they're working as collaborative teams to develop that it's the only way it happens I guarantee it the scale they threw up there this was probably highly debatable debating because teachers don't agree on an ABCD grade is it 92 or
188is it 93 trust me I've been through that to get one building to accept a grading scale is nearly impossible because of training philosophy whatever that's what our expectation is is we're moving that direction it's a big move and hard work my frustration and you can see it is for years I battled under the idea that we're not consistent you change things every year and why do we change things because people have stood up and fought it and it's not the majority it's the minority the Dortmund minority should not rule it should be the data that shows we're making significant changes I don't know if there's a good answer but we are going to continue to work at this I'm not gonna all come in July again at the board retreat and say this is
189the results of where we are with HRS our expectations and we've adjusted remember at one point we're all going to be certified level one by a certain date we moved it a year covet happened we moved level two three years back it's the same we listen to the principles we look at that this has been a long night yes so we can move on so and I apologize again you're going to hear it every month I would apologize because I will question everything but we will move on at this point and and please don't get us wrong we we know we're moving in the right direction we just want to make sure we're moving in the right direction the right way so so thank you for your guys's time um we can move on now
190we're on to our discussion items as if that wasn't enough so we just went through so uh first thing on our item is the HRS Summit which was phenomenal um if we have a report on that that's up to you guys no I I put this on there so you guys can report so let me get a report sorry yeah you did I did I loved it I thought you guys already reported are we already reported yep I I prepared about an hour worth of comments on on the meeting in San Antonio no um the only thing I'm going to say about it it was phenomenal I think we learned a lot as a district as board members as administrators there were some things in there that was brought to my attention that clicked you
191know when we start talking about high liability schools about kids falling out from the crab clawing and crab walking and and we're out running and curriculums that are are just a little extensive and that we need to based our our curriculums on standards and make sure that those standards addressed our testing so anyway that was that was uh pretty good any uh from that we will move on so next discussion item budget process and timeline [Music] um chairman Peterson members of the board I'm not going to spend a lot of time with this just so you know we do have a budget timeline of the process that we've followed it works very well you can get on that if I can find it because I have it here [Music] upstairs [Music] the reason why we
192have these presentations and typically we don't have as many presentations we have tonight we heard from transportation and Food Service each month you'll get two departments and their focus is setting up the budget budget priorities so you can hear when we get into that May and June why our budget looks the way it is we've been really lean with our departments the last 10 years we may have to look at that hopefully we'll have funding but this works John's with me on all these dates um and we'll just keep working there'll be an update every month so right now we're right in the middle of the legislative process we have no numbers in terms of our 100 which sets our funding so getting real excited about this budget makes no sense [Music] so any discussion
193from any of the board members on budget process and timelines at all nope not right now all right we can move on next topic legislative update which I think a lot of people are curious about yeah I'm not um Peterson board I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this there is there is a ton of information out there I've provided an update to the staff daily probably the big ones that we need to talk about is the ECA is full fully in place in both houses which is a positive thing any amendments that will delete that would definitely be opposed in there are several bills out there that deal with Charter Schools and vouchers as you go through those don't be misled by the titles of those for example I think our
194district is very clear on parental rights but the 117 that deals with parental rights tips the boat it allows parents to sue the district for not communicating appropriately about gender identity it's a no win for school districts not only does it open the way for lawsuits it requires us that we pay for the hearing officer and then the legislation is very clear they can sue for damages it puts the district in a position that we would be chasing paperwork forever because right now the hearing officer process in terms of teachers is so lengthy it's seven to nine months out so you're not going to get answers to any of these questions and the district has to pay for that hearing officer there's no skin in the game of parents who want to sue the business
195it's all on us 117 I don't think we'll move forward but it's a little scary um again I have a lengthy discussion on these but I'm not going to do that need to be cautious about Senate file again it looks it looks good it's about education and teacher resources what it does is it takes away the block grant from school districts we are forced to use the funds identified for teachers for the number of teachers the model provides in other words the block graph is pulled apart local control goes out the window what we potentially lose is we would lose counselors Elementary counselors because they're not in the model we would lose their nurses because they're not a new model we lose funding for our sros because that's not in the model and every other
196position that our district determines is important for an instructional program we would lose because we lose the water in the other fallacy to that is it identifies the number of teachers you should have K3 four five but it only calculates their salary based on a figure much less than we already paid so we'd have to hire teachers or teachers at a rate that they're not going to compensate us for because we're not going to hire teachers less than our teachers now and also we don't have room for all those classroom teachers and even in our declining enrollments we've faced that so that's really scary to me um the only other one is Senate file 158 it looks like our retirement costs will go up they're going to add one percent across the board 0.05 for
197employees 0.054 employers maybe not a bad thing but horrible timing I think to do that and we just we've only been one year out of the last raises I can tell you that I'm really um I'm really I'll say pleased and supportive of our Representatives Senator Schuler is doing a great job representative Berger exceptionally they've communicated frequently I actually sent out to Representatives Burgers communication I think yesterday and they're doing a good job they're on the right side of these issues and our hats off to them John Williams is not here he actually went to the Forum uh he has his business meetings down there so he met with both Representatives took him to dinner um and again we'll have more of an update next week but I think tomorrow is the last day for
198third reading so the list should be clear and that's good news I think anyway that's an idea okay thank you I know you probably just heard blah blah blah blah blah that's still good so okay Mr you pushed a button you weren't supposed to push well they go away it ran away contracts oh sorry yes no we didn't okay the information on that you have a list of administrative contracts that will be approved next month okay all right now we don't I did miss that so [Music] um legislative update kind of did that or did he no he talked about that so we're on the EHS don't I need Jared attention here so no that's me okay so chairman Peterson trustees um just kind of an update in our thought process with the domes we
199are moving forward we are working just what exactly we told you about one of the questions the best questions out there is how we're going to pay for it I had John look into borrowing the money that we've talked about and again as I see this is spending now 1.4 million dollars to the budget to our carryover may concern you may concern our community borrowing the money 1.4 million dollars would cost us around 180 190 000 a year for the next 10 years our expectation our ability in the budget to line item 190 000 for the next 10 years is cake can be done doesn't spend down our carryover it makes it uh a commitment with this community for the next 10 years the idea of this facility for our students at 190 000 a
200year is a no-brainer I believe I have uh and we will move forward with a public forum and I need to get a decision from the board you want to do that in February or you want to do it in March we do it in February it'll allow us a little more time in terms of public comment after the hearing if we do it in March it'll give us more time to actually be able to present something in terms of where we are with bids forecasts and all that so I guess do we need more time to get that information Jared would you have more time to get information about the domes or more time for the public to comment are you okay to do this in I think it's February 28th at this point
201we're ready to do the public hearing I think we've got enough information to be able to present to the public what it is that we're wanting to accomplish with the domes we kind of know pretty well where the pricing is we can show you you know last time we showed your pricing with one and two we've also done some pricing with three recognizing that you know you're going to be on a totally different site and so that pricing become a little bit different with what John's put together we've got kind of the cost analysis the pros and cons and can show you the actually in a unique way really how within eight years there's a cost benefit which in education is kind of hard to uh to track and pinpoint but John's done a great
202job of that so I think we've got enough information to be able to share with um our constituents kind of where things are at we've got ways to be able to finance it so my recommendation would be able to ready by February I think we should do it in February does this require a motion is there a quick hire an act of the board no no no [Music] so that's the 28 the 28 so there's no motion that needs to be carried on this it's it's it's we don't necessarily we don't have to have a form there for this thing this it would be nice to have everybody there but we considered a special board meeting so we do need oh okay so so we don't need to move on if it's a special board
203meeting no okay I will not be there on the 28th 28th okay all right I'm fully supportive of having it that day but I won't be able to continue okay what time are you looking at I'd say six so we don't confuse anybody six o'clock on the 28th encourage people to be there any any comments from the board at all I can be there okay and let people know so okay good conversations on paper um put it on our website hopefully we'll get our sports teams and other activities to communicate with the parents to come to either Express their concerns it'll be a short presentation of what we're talking about and then as part of that presentation will be the funding options the board will not take action it's not that kind of meeting then
204we'll have roughly when I was about a 45 day comment period it sits of what that sits within wapa or less decisions will probably have to be made in April yeah if we bought this done we'll go out next fall so moving forward with it um one thing I would request and I don't know if we can approach uh Rocco um and Dan wheeler as far as economic benefits to putting these in in our community and if we have Ethan at our Forum to be able to reach out and talk to people about uh bringing people in that we have those individuals here as well so it's a great idea with John and his cost analysis it is hard to put a dollar value on a space it's more of a value to our community
205than it is to us but there is a dollar value in terms of a teaching space we create you know two actually four if you split them in half and John convinced himself his word convinced that it can be done okay so that would just be one thing as it would get uh little oatmeal there okay we'll try to do that I think he would be there and [Music] thank you [Music] so we are done with the dough month date now public comments we're moving on to do we have any public comments out there I see some social study people and PE people and they have no comments they have no comments nothing nothing from the social studies Department in the back and the PE Department's ignoring us all right [Music] supposed to have done
206that in 85. yeah a long time ago that was a little different though so there is no public comments we'll move on to our action items um Mr Thomas Personnel yes Krista hey sorry I've been watching on YouTube because you could hear it so much better so I'm just a little bit delayed but I can be there on the 28th and I'm going to log off now because the rest of the family is getting ready to leave for dinner so enjoy Maui all right thank you we'll see you thanks Krista thank you can you imagine sitting there that long one yeah yeah I'm sitting on the beach watching it yeah dedication board members we have one resignation I recommend that you approve that resignation we had a leave of absence she decided not to return
207okay all right so I need a motion to approve the resignation as previously discussed from of leave of absence um do I have a motion to approve that sure moved a second you got both of those um all in favor all right and you post okay it's getting late you're on record I got six days not that it's going to matter but anyway I got one name so she has to stay working here for every individual is so all right so next action item is I need to approve the district calendar for the 23-24 and tentatively the 24-25 school years I recommend is you approve it okay thank you second got a first and second motion is that both of them all a favorite theme here any opposed motion carries uh next on there we
208need to have a motion to approve the Region 5 BOCES lease agreement can we move before you speak just kidding I'm just kidding I'm just up here if there's any questions what's the bottom line on the agreement easy [Music] about 1800 a month it's the curling building yeah for our new board members it's two-thirds of the curling building they've been doing that now this is their fifth year oh that's right they have excuse me the only question is there any significant change to this lease from what we've improved in the past then I move that we approve the lease okay that's all in favor aye any opposed oh sorry [Music] yeah motion passes thank you yep okay I need a motion to approve the first reading of the jecba admission of exchange students Mr Thomas
209do you have some comments on that board members you can see up here this is our policy je CBA we allow exchange students part of that allowing exchange students is they have to be approved by the board the companies that allow them with these two set a USA and EF High School exchange have approached us provide us the next the necessary documents including liability uh some on that list probably don't exist anymore but again we don't go after it talking to the high school they're trying to decide what's an acceptable number we used to allow nine nine exchange students of high school is two men so I started at five I was hoping they'd touch base with me they didn't know five or six but right now it's at five my recommendation to you is
210approve this at first reading it'll come back next month as a final approval okay and then I did notice that through the application process it did include middle school and high school but we clearly defined that it is 16 to 19 years old as far as the exchange students that we will take yes okay all right do I have a motion to approved that we need to clarify it's not approving the students it's approving the companies that yes yes so it's just approving the first reading of the policy Mr chairman I move that we approved the first reading of the admission of exchange students you'll have a second I have a first and I have a second time yeah motion and a second all in favor all right any opposed eyes have it to put
211motion passes so should I just move that we just table the water rights again I did ask specifically what [Music] that these are still going on and we will no late no more later okay so do I have a motion to table the Red Devil Ranch Water rides again and again chairman if you're okay we'll just probably drop this off let's tell when we're approached again okay that sounds good to me so do I need a motion to Mr prove that because we table this matter definitely okay so I kind of just table it until they have a meeting that's what and definitely until we heal her further so our motion is so Mike calls the meeting I'll let you know okay we're just tabling it every single meeting so let's take it off the
212list and definitely it is off and until we hear further okay all right do I have a second second second I have a motion and a second to and definitely suspend the water rights discussion for the Red Devil Ranch all in favor aye any opposed eyes have it motion passes next topic um so Jenny has decided that she wants to leave the board and so excuse me I guess you're done I don't think for the sake of gravity I move that Brian would take over the position be appointed to the record first and a second so there's a motion for Brian Woodward motioning Brian to sit on the BOCES board no record oh I'm sorry it's late now you're turning down I know so on the rec board all in favor any opposed eyes have
213it motion passes fantastic Now we move on to our Round Table Mr chairman I just briefly I just want to make sure that everyone who presented tonight understands how much we appreciate the amount of work that you absolutely for the school district it is absolutely phenomenal and we I don't know if we could really convey Howard Preston and appreciate Who We Are absolutely so please don't take any of the stuff that I kind of say personally and don't get defensive I I do I do sometimes question things and and hopefully you understand that's my makeup okay your house is safe toilet paper is expensive one thing I do and it's kind of been out there a little bit I can't say enough about uh Miss Gardner Diane Gardner um one of a wonderful woman and
214can't do uh can't say enough about what she's done for this community and and known her for a long time and her family went to school together Star Valley kind of grew up together a little bit with with her and her family but her heart is always been in the right place and and she's always put her kids first and I just want to publicly let everybody know how much our prayers and thoughts are with her at this time so you're here and then just real quickly I spoke with the law enforcement officer today and he talked about possibly wanting to get the Dare program started again in the middle schools I think with a lot of the issues that we're having with drugs and alcohol and vaping I think it's it's time we looked
215at reinstating that at not only is it a good program as far as the drugs and alcohol are concerned but it gets the officers in the schools and getting the students to get to know the officers which I think has a huge impact on on all of that so I'd like to put that into the discussion sometime if we want some of these officers to come and present you know whatever I can explain trustee wellingly did their program went away not because we didn't think it was value or important it went away because of funding okay the title did not allow us use title funds for dare because it's not research-based or best practice even at the time we thought that was a little unfair but that wasn't why dare went away okay if we
216can continue it it is a funding issue and we can't use Grant funds is that still the case so it's not that we didn't I loved it it's just federal funds I'm making my total of those so I would encourage the police officers put a kind of a bid together and let us know what kind of expense we're talking about okay I mean you need to talk about um you know the sheriff's department and the PD working together maybe to split the middle schools one you know the PD would do one and the sheriff's department would do the other or whatever but I I do think it's a a good program a worthwhile one that if we could swing it it would be really good to get it back in the schools [Music] okay so
217I guess are you going to pursue that or are we going to pursue that with the police department on the Dare side and they're off duty right when they come in are they on duty [Music] um I'm trying to think who's in charge um I spoke with Kirby lamb today he mentioned some of the officers that had done it in the past but they have several officers that are doing it right now we travel to the valley and they do it in the schools over in the valley um so I mean I could talk to him and see what officers are in charge of that [Music] they talked about it in the commissioner's meeting and so he brought it to my attention at the clerk's office [Music] we do have a good working relationship with
218our local people the sheriff's department has always been supportive it's typically dare has been shared yeah Department's program again with what we're seeing with vaping in our schools in our community would be one pretty strong message I think from them yeah [Music] with that I need a motion to continue our major Journey seconds I need a motion okay I got a motion and a second all in favor aye any opposed oh good never mind thank you very much